Rasha Saad explores the unprecedented victory of a party whose birthplace triggered the Arab Spring The landslide victory by the Islamist party Al-Nahda in the Tunisian Constituent Assembly elections was the focus of pundits this week. Al-Nahda took the world by surprise as it captured 41.47 per cent of the votes in the 23 October poll. The party won 90 seats, making it the largest bloc in the 217-member assembly. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat Abdallah Iskandar echoed the surprise. According to Iskandar, the surprise was doubled as it included "the crushing defeat" of the Progressive Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, Iskandar wrote, paid a hefty price for its opposition to Bin Ali's regime, and that it relentlessly defended political and public freedoms, including the Islamists' right to exercise political expression. Iskandar explained that the party paid a price for its operation under "the former tyrannical regime and to its name's connection to that regime." "The Tunisians conveyed their extreme sensitivity towards tyranny from which they suffered throughout the decades, and their yearning for all that is opposed to that tyranny," Iskandar wrote. Al-Nahda leader Rached Ghannouchi's speech following the victory was seen as representing the moderate voice of Islam and a wish to achieve concord between Islamic values and the values of civil authority, political plurality and power transition. "However, the challenge resides in Al-Nahda's ability, after coming to power, to confront extremist movements, whether those inside it or those from outside, but also to found the civil and modern Tunisian state that would exclude all forms of tyranny which the Tunisians hated and against which they rebelled," Iskandar concluded. Also in Al-Hayat, Hassan Haidar said he admired Ghannouchi's statements on the Turkish model and that Turkey represents not just a model for Tunisians, but for all Arabs. Haidar wrote that Ghannouchi has to understand that what Turkey is witnessing today in terms of joining together Islam and secularism is the result of a century of the legacy of Ataturk, "a legacy that is difficult to overcome and one which the Islamists did not willingly choose." Haidar also voiced worries by some who warn that "the experience of governing will not be an easy one for Arab Islamists, first because of their lack of experience, and second because the problems they will inherit from tyrannical regimes are immense." Randa Takieddin, also in Al-Hayat, wrote that the victory by Al-Nahda and the speech by Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the head of Libya's National Transitional Council on the rule of Sharia in Libya, on the day he declared the country had been liberated from Muammar Gaddafi, "are raising anxiety about the future of democracies in both countries." In her article 'The fear that Islamist parties will dominate', Takieddin also warned that "what some have called the 'Arab Spring' might turn into the dominance of Islamist parties, which are the best-organised, if secular parties fail to build a popular base and set down a strategy for building a truly democratic state." In the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, Adel Al-Toraifi said the irony is that in 1987 Ghannouchi, among other Islamists, was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labour on charges of attempting to overthrow the ruling regime of the then president Habib Bourguiba. "It perhaps failed to cross Bourguiba's mind that the then young Sheikh [Ghannouchi] would live in exile for 25 years, only to return to Tunisia victoriously as his -- banned -- Islamist party finished in first place in the first free elections following the ouster of Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali." Another irony, according to Al-Torafi, is that Islamists participated in the 1989 Tunisian parliamentary elections and claimed to have won around 40 per cent of the vote before the regime overturned the election results. Also in Asharq Al-Awsat, Diana Mukkaled, referred to the attack by some "Islamist hardliners" on Tunisia's Nessma television station after it screened an Iranian movie which criticises corruption and despotic religious rule. Opponents accused Nessma of seeking to incite the public and push people towards violence by screening the film Persepolis which would distort their public image just a few days before the elections. According to Mukkaled, with their actions, the Islamists have appeared to say loudly that they easily succumb to violence and that this has been made apparent on more than one occasion. In Tunisia, Mukkaled wrote, the revolutionaries have passed their first test because there are progressive indicators of education, women's rights and economic growth there. "Today, Tunisia is taking its post-revolution test with regards to public and personal freedoms, contending with remnants of the former regime and Islamist groups," Mukkaled wrote. "Tunisia was the spark of hope for a free and socially active Arab horizon. The coming days will prove this to us," Mukkaled added. In its editorial, the Saudi Arabian daily Al-Watan wrote that the landslide victory of Al-Nahda, Tunisia's "first democratic elections", came as no surprise. Entitled 'The new Tunisia', the editorial said it was only natural that Tunisians lean towards religion as it is "their country's main identity" and also as a show of "rebellion and rejection to the past's ruthlessness of secular rule." The editorial also referred to the successful campaign by the party which rejected religious extremism and voiced moderate ideology that tends to encourage unity among all powers in the country. In the UAE's Al-Bayan, Al-Sayed Weld Abah described what happened in Tunisia as "an earthquake". While the victory of Islamists was not surprising, according to Weld Abah, the overwhelming victory of Al-Nahda was. Weld Abah pointed that some analysts perceive that Tunisian Islamists will produce an Islamic model similar to Turkey's. "And hence, in the Arab context, they will present a special Islamic model that will not be easily emulated by fellow Arab countries."
