Despite the doubts of some foreign pundits, Tunisians are proving that democracy is not incompatible with Islam, and that the Arabs can do it alone, writes Karem Yehia Observers lauded last week's elections in Tunisia as the most democratic, pluralistic and transparent polls ever held in modern Arab history, and certainly during the post-colonial era. The assertion may be open to question. Sudan held democratic elections of this sort after the overthrow of Jaafar Numeiri in the mid-1980s, although its results were soon annulled in 1989 by a military coup in alliance with the Islamists behind Al-Turabi. Lebanon is also famed for holding elections that are described as democratic, transparent and pluralistic. Certainly, elections there are a far cry from the types of polls that have been one of the trademarks of the sham democracies in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world. However, the problem in Lebanon is the sectarianism entrenched in the society and the political system, which effectively voids the electoral process of its democratic spirit. The same applies, perhaps more acutely, to post-Saddam Iraq. Elections there, too, were pluralistic and transparent on the surface, conducted in accordance with international standards, and even permitted for impartial observers from both Iraq and abroad. But their spirit was killed by the fact that they took place beneath the sword of foreign occupation and that they were also governed by detestable sectarian conditions and passions. And when the Tunisians, who have just emerged from elections week, look westward, they would be hard put to describe Algerian parliamentary and presidential elections as truly free, transparent and pluralistic. After all, "the generals" control all the strings from behind the scenes in that country that is still recovering from a gruelling 10-year civil war in which at least 100,000 people were killed. Also, the officially banned Islamist Salvation Front, which won the 1991 elections, never even had the chance to form a government. Morocco, meanwhile, offers the most progressive "restricted democracy" in the Arab world and its parliamentary elections do breathe a true democratic spirit. But they still do not match Tunisia's recent polls, which remain miles ahead in terms of their modernist form and spirit. Nor can the Moroccan experience compare to the results of the Tunisian experience which, also for the first time in modern Arab history, brought Islamists to power by means of a ballot whose credibility was beyond question and by means of genuine and unrestricted political party competition. The huge turnout for last week's polls furnished tangible testimony to the popular legitimacy the democratic process acquired after the 14 January Revolution. The reports of domestic and foreign observers further certified its legitimacy, with their confirmations of the integrity of the polls and the modernist Islamist Al-Nahda Party's rightful claim to victory. But more importantly, when we contemplate the preliminary general results announced by the Higher Electoral Board last Thursday, we realise that Tunisia has become the first Arab country to truly emerge from the single state-party era without having to undergo a foreign invasion on the pretext of "liberating" the country from a cruel tyrant, and without the complications of sectarian calculations or the need to project these onto the political system. Tunisia is the most homogeneous Arab society and, alongside Egypt, it is one of the first Arab countries to embark on a modernisation project of a state building, a process that began in Egypt under Mohamed Ali at the turn of the 19th century and in Tunisia under Ahmed Bey of Tunis and the Ottoman viceroy Kheireddin Pasha around the same time. Contrary to the "nightmare" that has been plaguing ruling circles, the media and the intelligentsia in the West, democracy after ages of "Oriental despotism" and the "tyranny of the generals" does not inevitably produce rule by "Islamist fascists". Perhaps influenced by the West's Islamist nightmare, many Arabs and Muslims tend to see only half the glass. They imagine that Al-Nahda Islamists obtained an absolute majority that will give Sheikh Al-Ghannouchi's men full rein to rule without restriction. In fact, 60 per cent of Tunisians did not vote for Al-Nahda, and a slightly lower number did not hand their vote to any of the Islamist lists at all. As a result, these remaining Islamist lists only obtained five seats in parliament to add to Al-Nahda's 90 out of a total of 219 seats. The results also inform us that the majority of the Constitutional Assembly, which has a year to draw up the country's second constitution, is a broad collection of liberals and leftists, as quarrelsome and as they may be in politics. Even the centre left seems to be moving towards the "liberal leftists". The Constitutional Assembly consists of representatives of 19 parties and nine electoral lists that entered the elections independently. Not only has the one-party state been shown the door, no party possesses an absolute majority. Al-Nahda is definitely a majority party, in that it was the party that received the most votes in all the electoral districts with the exception of Sidi Bouzeid, the cradle of the Tunisian revolution, where the Popular Petition list swept the polls for various and complex reasons. But Al-Nahda did not obtain a sizeable enough majority to form a government on its own. It has the right to lead a coalition, but its freedom will be restricted by its coalition partners, which will be the major parties from the centre left, namely the two runners-up in the elections, the Congress for the Republic (30 seats) and the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (21 seats). Nor should one needlessly inflate the Islamism of Al-Nahda. The party is the heir to the Islamist Trend Movement which, since its founding in 1981, has reconciled itself with modernist outlooks and values more than any other major movement in political Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. If Al-Ghannouchi avoids answering crucial questions on the "Brotherhood", this strongly suggests that he and his party have severed ties with that group and its legacy, just as they have done with the various shades of anti-modernist Salafist movements that inhibit progress. Certainly the stances that Al-Ghannouchi has taken in various interviews with Al-Ahram or Al-Jazeera support this break with the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains encumbered by its hierarchical rigidity and dogma. In word and deed, Al-Nahda has left Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood behind and moved forward toward a modernism "that does not conflict with the positive and illuminating aspects of Islamic civilisation that call to mind such enlightened Muslim philosophers and scientists as Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Rushd." The party's modernist rhetoric helps explain why many Tunisian felt comfortable voting for it even if they were not members of the party or even Islamist. "Yes, I voted for it on the basis of its principle that there should be no compulsion in faith," was the answer offered by such voters. Even after the preliminary results came out and the party's supporters began to celebrate in front of the party headquarters, their chant was heartening: "There is no need to fear or worry. The people chose Al-Nahda [Renaissance]." From the outset, Al-Nahda Party remained consistently open to and in touch with a broad spectrum of Tunisia's intelligentsia. There was none of that phobia against liberal and left-wing intellectuals that the Islamists in Egypt have indulged in since 25 January. Nor was there any of that bickering over which should come first, parliamentary elections or a constitution, or other such controversies that have polarised Egyptian political forces. Al-Nahda nominated Abu Yarab Al-Marzuqi -- an intellectual with no Islamist credentials whatsoever -- to head its list for District 1 of Tunis, and it nominated Souad Abdel-Rahim, a non-veiled pharmacologist, to lead the party's list for the capital's second electoral district. In an interview with her on 23 October, after the polls closed, she informed Al-Ahram Weekly that she was not a party member. In fact, in her university days she had been a leftist political activist, at the opposite end of the political spectrum to the Islamists. In addition, one of the ironies of the October 2011 elections is that the man in charge of supervising the first elections in the Arab world that brought Islamists to power peacefully and democratically was a leftist rights activist. Kemal Al-Jandoubi, chairman of the Supreme Authority for Elections, told me the day after the elections, "Tunisia is proving to the world that there is no contradiction between Islam and democracy." This venerable leftist and long-time opponent of the Zein Al-Abidine Bin Ali dictatorship earned, and rightfully, the praise he received from the representative of the Islamist mainstream in Tunisia, Al-Nahda. On the other hand, he came in for some harsh criticism from the Islamists' adversaries who accused him and the electoral commission of being over indulgent with Al-Nahda's electoral transgressions, such as vote-purchasing, continuing propaganda on polling day, and using mosques as a campaign forum. Of course, doubts and suspicions continue to hover among segments of the intelligentsia and public with regard to Al-Nahda's real intentions. Critics point to its "double rhetoric" and to "the gap between its modernist leadership and its backwards ranks". Nevertheless, discussions of any depth on this subject generally end on the reassuring note that Al-Nahda is changing just as is the whole of Tunisia. In addition, the second interim period, which will be led by the elected Constitutional Assembly, will only last a year until a new constitution emerges. At that point, Tunisian society will have an opportunity to judge Al-Nahda's performance via another round at the ballot box. This short period will be the test of the credibility of Al-Nahda, the political process as a whole with respect to its performance on the economy and unemployment as well as on civic and individual freedoms and women's rights. As Tunisians look around them they feel no small amount of satisfaction and, perhaps, pride. To their left is the Algerian giant neighbour with its banned Salvation Front and its powerful generals, and to their right is another large and wealthy neighbour, fresh out of a brutal civil war, whose revolutionary leaders felt no need to wait for a constitution or elections to declare what they call rule by Islamic law and to lift the ban against polygamy. Then, just beyond that is Egypt, the "Mother of the World" and the "Beacon of Arabism", where the revolution appears to have lost its compass as it erupted into squabbles over how to make the transition to democracy and hold elections. As for Tunisia, which abolished slavery in 1840, two decades before the US, and which scored another precedent for the Arabs and Muslims in 1861 in the form of the first Tunisian constitution, it is once again leading the way forward in a tumultuous and murky environment by means of elections that received both domestic and international stamps of approval. Moreover, these elections, which were not held under the gun of a foreign occupying power or restricted in form and substance by a constitutional monarchy or sectarian considerations, brought a new brand of Islamists -- open-minded, forward looking and modern in their outlook -- to power as partners in a coalition with major liberal and secularist forces. If you were to ask Tunisians today, "Has your country leaped from the frying pan of dictatorship to the fire of Islamist rule?" your question would strike them as naive. To them, the most important questions arise now that the elections are over and Tunisia has entered its second transitional phase. They will be looking at the new types of politicians that are emerging -- liberal Islamists and liberal leftists -- and how they will work together to form a government, and whether there would be any kinds of dealing with the US or the EU over power-sharing formulas and commitments to democracy and a market economy. Equally, if not more crucially for most Tunisians, is the concern for the future of the demands that inspired the Arab Spring that spread from Tunisia to the rest of the Arab world; namely, the call for social justice and economic autonomy before the region is swept by uprisings of the poor and hungry.
