Tunisia's political elite is failing to convince the country's voters to participate in the democratic transition in the run-up to the 23 October elections, writes Mourad Teyeb in Tunis Over the past 50 years, Tunisians have become used to de facto single-party rule, to which the country's former president Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali, ousted as a result of popular protest against his rule in January, added various other opposition parties. However, these were chiefly decorative and did not affect the former ruling RCD Party, within which no dissent was allowed. However, after the country's 14 January Revolution, a plethora of political parties was formed, and by early July over 100 had been authorised. While many commentators have not been surprised at this sudden expansion in the number of the country's political parties, pointing to other democratic transitions around the world, others, including veteran politician Ahmed Mestiri, founder of the Mouvement démocratique socialiste (MDS), who was prominent in the opposition both during the rule of former president Habib Bourguiba and under Bin Ali, have accused the transitional government of manipulating the situation to its advantage. Whatever the case may be, the political situation in Tunisia today has led to the formation of a peculiar political landscape, since Tunisia's many political parties, including the more popular ones, like the country's ruling political elite, have no experience of democracy or political pluralism. The parties do not have electoral programmes that mark them off from one another, and they have not put forward proposals to try to meet the key challenges facing the country, including unemployment, the role of religion in politics, and reforming the country's education and political systems. Most of the newly formed parties have no real popular support or ability to attract people to them, and most of their leaders are only concerned to win a seat for themselves in the Tunisian Constituent Assembly, or parliament. The present chaos and uncertainty in the political scene has only strengthened people's distrust of the transition itself, with the new parties appearing weak, poorly organised and unpopular and without any clear strategy for building popular support. For many, all they have succeeded in doing since they were formed in the aftermath of the January Revolution is attacking the country's Islamist-oriented Ennahdha Party and criticising the media for not covering their activities. The quality of political discourse in the country has been mediocre as a result, with parties and politicians reacting to the issues of the moment but avoiding putting forward proposals to deal with the country's longer-term ills. However, some stronger groups have appeared over recent months, often in the form of coalitions of smaller parties, though even here fragmentation and dissent have all too quickly set in. The Democratic Modernist Pole (PDM), for example, a coalition of left-wing parties, quickly disintegrated when Chokri Belaïd, chair of the Mouvement des patriotes démocrates (MPD), withdraw from the coalition. Earlier, the PDM had also been joined by the Al-Wifek Al-Jomhouri (Republican Alliance) Party, a liberal group created and headed by a London-based businessman, which many commentators considered contradictory since the Alliance is supposed to be on the right of the Tunisian political spectrum. Meanwhile, the Tunisian police have not hesitated to use force against demonstrators aiming to institute sit-ins in the capital Tunis. Last month, violence and tear gas were used against protesters in the streets of the capital, indicating both that the kind of protests that brought down the former regime have not ended and that the country's new political parties have been unable to get through to the demonstrators. The official recognition extended to the Islamist Ennahdha (Renaissance) Party since the January Revolution has been seen as a turning point in post-Bin Ali Tunisia, with commentators saying that the Party's influence over the country's future is likely to be immense. Although the Party's leaders have not called for the passing of laws designed to enforce Islamic practices in Tunisia, Ennahdha is at the centre of a growing debate on the role of Islam in the country's young democracy. Abdel-Hamid Jelassi, a senior Ennahdha official, is in no doubt that his Party "resonates with many Tunisians." While "it is impossible to say how popular Ennahdha is, a large segment of Tunisia's population sympathises with the Islamist movement," Jelassi said. Foreign observers agree. According to Eric Goldstein, deputy-director for Middle East and North Africa at the US NGO Human Rights Watch, "Ennahdha has a clear significant base of support in Tunisia and wants to play a political role. It should be allowed to play a political role as long as it remains true to its professed commitments: to respect the rules of the game, to respect the rights of women and to respect the results of elections." Jelassi believes that "democracy in Tunisia, as well as in the Arab world, can have a religious dimension." However, Ennahdha "wants to win over Tunisian voters not because of religion but because of its political platform, on unemployment or education, for example." Jelassi described Ennahdha as "a variation" on Turkey's Islamist-leaning ruling Justice and Development Party. For French academic Pierre Vermeren, Tunisian society remains "deeply Islamist sensitive," with Islam being deeply anchored in a society in which more than 95 per cent of the population is Muslim. In his book Maghreb: la démocratie impossible? (The Maghreb: Impossible Democracy?), Vermeren wrote that a "moralising religious discourse is easy to spread [in Maghreb societies] because of the rejection of corruption and other practices," concluding that "the ground is quite fertile" for Islamism to spread within the marginalised classes of society. Ennahdha's so-far moderate statements have failed to convince the country's secular parties and activists, who believe that the Party practices a "double discourse," one directed at the media and general public and one directed at its members and supporters. Already more popular, better organised and more experienced than most other Tunisian political groups, Ennahdha has also shown itself able to profit from the weaknesses of other parties and their mistakes. It has also managed to turn criticisms to its own benefit. The Party communicates through rallies, workshops, conferences and its own newspaper, Al-Fajr (The Dawn), once banned by Bin Ali, and it may also be profiting from the rise of sister organisations elsewhere in the Maghreb region. The possible revival of Islamism in Libya and the popular and well-organised Islamist movement in Algeria are likely to boost the popularity of Tunisia's Ennahdha, especially if the conflict in Libya settles down in favour of the rebels. Nevertheless, in addition to Ennahdha some other secular parties have also succeeded to some extent in imposing themselves on the political landscape. The Parti démocratique progressiste (PDP), which has raised a lot of money from the country's business community, was the first to launch a western-style electoral campaign following the January Revolution, though its leader, Ahmed Najib Chebbi, remains unpopular, especially among the young. The Democratic Modernist Pole (PDM), bringing together parties and groups such as the Voix du centre, Ettajdid, Alliance républicaine, Parti du travail patriote démocratique, Mouvement des patriotes démocrates, Front populaire unioniste, Mouvement de la citoyenneté et de la justice, Parti avant-garde arabe démocratique and the Parti Tunisie verte, has also been gaining popularity, though it does not constitute a real threat to Ennahdha. The Forum démocratique pour le travail et les libertés (Takattol), the Congrès pour la république (CPR) and the Parti communiste des ouvriers tunisiens (PCOT), all longer-established parties, demonstrated real opposition to the Bin Ali regime, with leaders Mustafa bin Jaafar, Moncef Marzouki, and Hamma Hammami, respectively, all living in exile in France while the parties' members faced repression in Tunisia itself. Yet, while these politicians have credible ideological and political backgrounds, their popularity is still weak. Hammami is rejected by many Tunisians, who find it difficult to accept his communist convicions, and one of the PCOT's rallies in a town outside Tunis was attacked by a mob. Al-Watan (The Nation), Al-Moubadara (The Initiative) and Al-Moustaqbal (The Future) are new parties led by members of the former regime in Mohamed Jegham, Kamal Morjane and Sahbi Basli, respectively. These parties will likely attract votes from supporters of the former ruling RCD, even if public opinion as a whole is suspicious of them. The Workers Union (UGTT) and the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) are also expected to play a role in the October elections. However, it is still uncertain how great the turnout in these elections is likely to be. Up until the August 14 deadline for voter registration, fewer than three million of Tunisia's 7.9 million member electorate had registered at the 500 registration centres across the country and abroad.
