While Al-Nahda swept the elections in Tunisia, not everyone is happy with the result, writes Karem Yehia In Tunisia, the word "activist" carries none of the negative connotations it does in the Levant and even Egypt. Also, whereas in these parts of the Arab world the term is generally applied to leftists and Arab nationalists, in Tunisia an "activist" can be an Islamist, leftist, Arab nationalist or a member of any shade of the opposition. So one should not be surprised to hear of someone referred to as an Islamist activist or an Al-Nahda Party activist. On the other hand, it is important to understand how the Islamists' political adversaries feel. The "secularists," as they were called, never contested Tunisia's Islamic identity. To be a Tunisian is to be Muslim by virtue of the fact that history, geography and demographics have ordained that 98 per cent of the population is Muslim. In addition, due to the legacy of 75 years of French rule, which ended with Tunisia's declaration of independence in 1956, although its physical imprint and elements of its cultural imprint remain, it has become virtually axiomatic in the Tunisian collective consciousness that to be a "patriot" and a "Tunisian" is to be a Muslim, in contrast to the French and Italian minority that are "predominantly Christian" and who constituted half a million of Tunisia's population of 3.5 million at the time of independence. These considerations need to be borne in mind as we attempt to answer the question of the moment in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world: Why did the Islamist Al-Nahda Party win the first democratic elections in the "Arab Spring"? When I put the question to ordinary Tunisians, I almost invariably encountered the response that they cast their vote for the Islamist Al-Nahda Party without the slightest hesitation. They were quick to add that they had never been activists in the outlawed and underground Al-Ittijah Al-Islami (Islamic Tendency) Movement founded by Rashed Al-Ghannushi in 1981; however, since Tunisia is a Muslim country they voted for Al-Nahda so that it could "restore Islam to the country". The physical evidence you see in the towns and cities of Tunisia seems to pull the rug out from under this reasoning, however. Mosques abound and the call to prayer reverberates ubiquitously from their minarets five times a day. Even the ousted president, Ben Ali, who was often accused of fighting Islam and not just the Islamists, played the religious game or had it played for him. His official autobiography was rewritten early on in his rule to state that he was born "within the four walls of the Mosque of Sidi Makhlouf". Sidi Makhlouf, whose tomb is housed in the mosque, is a widely revered holy man in Tunisia. Even Ben Ali's predecessor, President Al-Habib Bourguiba, may have attempted to tap religious sentiments, for not a few observers suspected his secularist credentials and questioned whether he was the Arab version of Turkey's Ataturk. Indeed, it is a little known fact in Tunisia that Bourguiba was a resident guest in the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo's Helmiya Gadida neighbourhood from 1945 to 1949, which is to say at the height of the popularity and political clout of the Muslim Brotherhood's founder Hassan Al-Banna. Outsiders or observers recently arrived in Tunisia may have had the impression that the poor and working classes were for Al-Nahda while the more well-to-do and the intelligentsia were against it. Al-Hadi Bulleid, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Tunisia, and widely respected across that country's ideological and political spectrum, categorically refutes this. "Unlike Algeria, we do not have an elite that is attached to France and thrives on French culture. What we have are people who completed their education in France, just as we have people who completed their education in the US; nothing deeper than that." He continued: "The Al-Nahda Party was successful because it was perceived to be working for the popular classes. At the same time, it acted as a national and Arab nationalist movement and not just an Islamist one. However, it would be mistaken to believe that this was the only party that tried to appeal to the working classes or that sought to link Arab nationalist with Islamic ones. We have a long established left and syndicate movement (as embodied in the General Federation of Labour) which has long exercised these political roles and which also paid dearly for their actions during the era of tyranny." In Bulleid's opinion, one of the chief reasons why Al-Nahda received such a large vote was because the Ben Ali regime had cast it as the primary target for repression in his police state. At the same time, the movement recast itself and presented itself to Tunisians as consistent with the Bourguiba legacy and the modernist reform movement. It did not oppose women's right to sue for divorce, the ban on polygamy or other such advances that were introduced in the 1959 personal status law. Perhaps, too, Al-Nahda leaders realised that, as Bulleid put it, "The average Tunisian is a moderate Muslim who likes to enjoy life and who aspires to progress and the types of individual and civil freedoms they have in Europe, even if he says that he is a supporter of political Islam." Not all Tunisians would agree. After leaving the polling station at Tareq Bin Ziad School in the Tadamun neighbourhood of Iryana, located some 15 kilometres from the capital, I was stopped by a young bearded gentleman called Ali Al-Bajawi, who sells sandwiches from a cart. "You came to cover the elections. They're a heresy," he said, barely able to control his anger. When I asked him to explain, he said, "The Tunisian people want God's Law not democracy. The people who organised these elections want government by the people not government in accordance with God's commands. As for the poor and the unemployed, they want God's law." When asked his opinion of the Al-Nahda Party, he grew angrier. "Al-Ghannushi has deviated from his course and we now think he's a heretic. He's chasing after a constitution, which is nothing but a denial of the law of God and God's dominion." Naturally, Al-Bajawi boycotted Tunisia's first elections since the fall of Ben Ali, under whose rule he had never dared to grow his beard. How many Salafis are there like him in Tunisia? He claims that they number over three million (Tunisia has a population of around 10.5 million of which one million live abroad). Syndicate activist Had Al-Zein Hamami cites a much more modest figure. There cannot be more than several hundred, she maintains. "Two weeks ago, they staged their largest demonstration ever. They bussed in their supporters from around the country to demonstrate in front of the capital building in protest against a film broadcast on the Nasma satellite station because it personified God. They could not have numbered more than a few hundred and most returned to their home towns after the demonstration." Mohamed Abdu, a well-known lawyer and opponent of Ben Ali, reputed for an article comparing the former Tunisian president with former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, argues that Al-Nahda Party has a liberal-sounding discourse because it knows the nature of the Tunisian people. However, he still counted himself among the party's many critics because of its equivocation on such issues as the civil state, the source of legislation and women's rights. Moreover, he was incensed at the party's infringements of election laws on polling day, when it handed out money and gifts to voters and continued its campaign propaganda. But an even greater sin was that it broke its pledge not to use mosques for campaign and political propaganda purposes. When a person of the stature of Abdu levels such criticisms they carry considerable weight. He is the number two man in the Congres pour la Republique (CPR) headed by Al-Moncef Al-Marzouqi. It was an electoral ally of Al-Nahda and is now likely to take part in a coalition government being the party to come in second in the elections. There may be another reason why many Tunisians and intellectuals, particularly, voted for Al-Nahda. They admire the Turkish "Erdogan model" even if they do not count themselves among Tunisia's Islamists, or even if the latter have yet to be tested. Kemal Bin Yunis, director of the Ibn Rushd Centre for Maghrebi (North African) Studies, says, "Tunisia is moving under the gravitational pull of the Turkish model. To moderate Islamists, such as Al-Nahda, this is inevitable for many reasons, most notably the Tunisia's economic dependence on tourism and its close ties with the West." Perhaps the fact that the US, France and the EU had announced that they would not object to the participation of Al-Nahda Islamists in government would also have eased the anxieties of many voters. Nor is there any indication that their confidence was misplaced. In the lead-up to the polls, the Tunisian press reported confirmations from Western decision-making centres that they would accept the results of the elections regardless of which party won. In this regard, Sheikh Al-��Ghannushi told Al-Ahram in interview two weeks ago that US and European officials had given his party sufficient assurance that it would be internationally accepted. When asked about his stance on the economy, he responded that his party was committed to a free market economy tempered by a degree of social responsibility. A source close to Al-Ghannushi told Al-Ahram Weekly that Al-Nahda Party headquarters, located on Kheir Al-Din Pasha Street in the upmarket area of downtown Tunisia, had a constant stream of foreign delegations, from the US and Europe in particular, since it opened several months ago. Syndicate activist Al-Zein Hamami offers a less upbeat prognosis of Al-Nahda's victory and the future of the Tunisian revolution. "The revolution was waged against tyranny and for social justice. It has been hijacked in favour of the liberal option. Even the Islamists of Al-Nahda are presenting themselves to the world as liberals." She paused for a moment, then continued: "Yes, they are activists. But where were they during the revolution when not a single Islamic slogan was heard? And before that, where were they when we were waging the resistance against the dictatorship at the political and social levels? I am not suggesting that they had not been victims of repression, but that was solely because they sought to overthrow the government in order to assume power themselves. Moreover, they were not the only ones to suffer repression and imprisonment." "But how is it that they are now reaping the confidence of the people and all those votes?" I asked. She responded: "Their popularity stems from the lack of political culture, from poverty and from their philanthropic activities. But, more importantly, they created a massive smokescreen that deceived the public into believing that they were moderate and modernist, and they spent huge sums of money that reeked of petrodollars from conservative Arab regimes." However, the syndicate activist furnishes what might be the most concrete reason for Al-Nahda's sweeping victory. The Federation of Labour had withdrawn from the political arena and abandoned its historic role as a counterweight to the government and the regime. Al-Ghannushi's men moved in to fill the void.
