African securityTunisia’s Islamist party Ennahda concedes defeat in Sunday’s elections
Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party, the first Islamist movement to come to power in an Arab country in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring turmoil, has conceded defeat in Tunisia’s general elections held on Sunday. Ennahda’s main secular rival, the Nidaa Tounes party, is certain to emerge as the strongest force in the new parliament. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ennahda did not try to turn Tunisia into an Islamist state and did not use its parliamentary majority to exclude non-Islamists from power. It opted for a coalition government with two secular parties, and participated in the writing of a new constitution which is regarded as the most progressive in the Arab world. Its mishandling of the economy, and a general anti-Islamist sentiment in Tunisia, doomed its hope of retaining power.
Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party, the first Islamist movement to come to power in an Arab country in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring turmoil, has conceded defeat in Tunisia’s general elections held on Sunday. Official results have not yet been made public, but Ennahda’s main secular rival, the Nidaa Tounes party, is certain to emerge as the strongest force in the new parliament.
The Arab Spring begun in Tunisia with the overthrow of the dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. In the first post-Ben Ali elections, in October 2011, Ennahda emerged as the strongest party in parliament. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, however, Ennahda did not try to turn Tunisia into an Islamist state and did not use its parliamentary majority to exclude non-Islamists from power. It opted for a coalition government with two secular parties, and participated in the writing of a new constitution which is regarded as the most progressive in the Arab world (see “Tunisia approves the most progressive constitution in the Arab world; constitution not based on Islamic law,” HSNW, 27 January 2014).
The coalition government was replaced in January this year by a caretaker government during a political crisis. The crisis erupted over the murder of two secular opposition leaders by Islamist militants. The assassins were not connected to Ennahda, but the anti-Islamist sentiment which swept through Tunisia in the wake of the assassination made Ennahda’s position in power untenable, and Ennahda relinquished power to a government consisting of technocrats and civil servants tasked with taking the country up to parliamentary and presidential elections.
The Guardian quotes a senior or official at Ennahda who acknowledged defeat by the secular Nidaa Tounes party.
“We have accepted this result and congratulate the winner,” Lotfi Zitoun, an Ennahda party official, said.
Zitoun said the party reiterated its call for a unity government, including Ennahda, in the interest of the country.
An Ennahda source said earlier that preliminary results showed Nidaa Tounes had won eighty seats in the 217-member assembly, ahead of sixty-seven won by Ennahda. The Nidaa Tounes leader, Beji Caid Essebsi, had already said on Sunday night that there were “positive indications” his party was ahead.
Analysts say that the defeat is a major setback for the Islamists of Ennahda, which presided over a coalition government with two secular partners for more than two years after winning the election for the constituent assembly (the precursor to the new parliament) in October 2011.
Michael Willis, a North Africa expert and a fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford University, told the Guardian that the decline in Ennahda’s electoral popularity reflected public discontent with the party’s handling of the economy. “On the doorsteps, the economy was the main issue. Nidaa Tounes is seen as having the expertise to get the economy back on track.”
