Arab Spring reaches the ballot box

It is all a far cry from the tumultuous events of last winter, when Tunisia overthrew the 23-year-dictatorship of Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali. This main drag in the centre of Tunis was a battleground between revolutionaries and the police.

As much as they love their coffees, Tunisians appear also to have a deep fondness for their freedom. This avenue is named after Habib Bourguiba, the former president of Tunis who threw off the French colonial yoke in the early 1960s and ruled with a benign autocracy until the Ben Ali era in the mid 1980s.

For some in the cafes, the talk has been of the heady politics of North Africa, the demise of Gaddafi, events in Syria and Egypt and, of course, the elections being held today almost nine months after Mohammed Bouazizi, a fruit seller in the town of Sidi Bousade, poured a few litres of petrol over himself and committed suicide giving rise to wider protests.

The self-immolation of Bouazizi sparked the Jasmine Revolution and once Ben Ali was sent packing, people across the Middle East began to rise up against their entrenched dictators with mixed success. In Bahrain it led to more repression. In Yemen and Syria, popular uprisings continue. In Egypt and Libya, the tyrants were overthrown.

Today’s election in Tunisia marks another milestone in the “Arab Spring”. In the hands of the voters in this nation of 10 million people lies the future of the political revolution which has changed the game in the Arab world forever. Its success is crucial and the stakes are high.

The caretaker Prime Minister, Beji Caid Essebsi, is confident the election will be a success. “The ingredients for a successful transition to democracy are there,” the 84-year-old told reporters in Washington earlier this month during a visit to meet US President Barack Obama. “If the Tunisian example succeeds ... there is a good chance others will succeed.” Essebsi also pointed out that if the elections fail in Tunisia, there is little chance of them working in other Arab states.

The election campaign began here just three weeks ago as the A4-sized candidate posters went up on the hundreds of “list walls” across the country. In Avenue de Paris in central Tunis, people gawped in wonder at the vast array of candidates. Two sprightly communists rapidly pasted up their poster. Then the various party cadres and candidates were out canvassing in almost every street. In Tunis’s ancient casbah, Fethi Al Ayouni, a smartly dressed, middle-aged man moved from shop to shop pressing the flesh as helpers handed out leaflets of the Al Amana party under the watchful eye of an elegant middle-aged female PR professional.

Al Ayouni’s party is one of 80 or so who are fielding candidates for a 216-seat assembly – whose job it is to draft a new constitution (the old one being scrapped after Ben Ali fled into exile in Saudi Arabia).

Many have compared this election to post-Franco Spain. The array of candidates is bewildering. Earlier this week, one called the Citizenship Movement deployed activists dressed as clowns with placards encouraging people to vote and handing out leaflets. One activist dressed as a chicken was intentionally surreal and aimed at shaking Tunisians up. Many are apathetic about the election and turnout is expected to be lacklustre.

Hassan Al Faoue, a 28-year-old taxi driver, says he will be voting in the election and says his vote will go to the Ennahda party – which is a populist Islamic movement along the lines of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. “I’m not sure about them, but I feel it is best for Tunisia,” he says while driving through traffic in downtown Tunis. Many in his neighbourhood of Bardo in Tunis are voting the same he says, though some are worried about Ennahda’s Islamic line and think they will erode the secular traditions established by Habib Bourguiba.

“If Ennahda take power, Tunisia will become a rubbish country,” says Kamel Al Ahmour, a tour guide in Avenue Bourguiba. “It will become an Islamic country,” he adds. Should Ennahda fail to respect democratic norms and enforce a strict version of Islam, Kamel – who for a short time was an imam in Holland – says: “There will be another revolution.”

“We did not launch a revolution for an Islamic state, but for democracy,” he says. “I won’t vote for Islamic people,” he adds. His vote, he says, is probably going to a party called Hezbollah Delaa. “I might vote for them ... They stand for unemployment benefit and free health care,” he says. According to Kamel, this party is more likely to uphold his new democratic freedoms and protect his human rights.

“I want them [the politicians] to improve Tunisia, for a better life for all Tunisians,” adds Kamel. Since the fall of the Ben Ali regime, much of the state security apparatus remains, though there has been reform since Ben Ali’s departure. Torture is no longer commonplace, though is still occurring according to some analysts.

Ennahda (or An Nahda as it is also known) is the party on everyone’s lips. They moved quickly after the January revolution and built up a network of around 200 offices and mobilised thousands of activists. Their leader – who spent over two decades in exile in the UK – is Rachid Ghannouchi, a bespectacled, bearded middle-aged man.

At a rally last week in a Tunis suburb, he played the crowd with aplomb, passionately setting out his party’s political agenda for a quarter of an hour to a small, well-behaved crowd of men and women in a rain-sodden park outside a mosque.

He soon handed over to the local candidate – who spoke along the same lines before handing over to a female candidate who, curiously, for a member of such a conservative Islamic party wore no hijab, the head covering traditional to Muslim women.

Modelled on the Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Tayip Erdogan, Ennadha – which means Renaissance in Arabic – also bears a similarity to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. In recent weeks, as battles raged between Tunisian Salafists and riot police, Ennahda tried to distance themselves from more extreme Islamists who were busy attacking the Nessma TV building and a university in the Sousse district for banning the niqab (the full-face veil) from the university campus.

Many in Tunisia take a dim view of the niqab – which if worn during the time of the old regime could have got a woman being arrested. Many Tunisian women shun conservative dress, such as headscarves, especially in the larger cities like Tunis.

On a visit to a conference on the Arab Spring in Turkey earlier this month, the Ennahda leader, Rachid Ghannouchi said he was in favour of a moderate form of Sharia law in Tunisia and denies the party will introduce measures to restrict personal freedoms if it wins power.

“Tunisians are afraid of extreme Islamists,” says Imene Amrani, a 25-year-old biology student and volunteer election observer. Secularism is deeply entrenched in Tunisian culture from the time of the French colonial government and the subsequent independence movement. Although minorities, the country is home to many Christians, Berbers and Jews. Many restaurants serve alcohol and there are some bars.

Talel Nacer, the 26-year-old son of an imam from Gafsa, might appear a model Ennadha supporter. But he says he will vote for an independent candidate. Even if Ennahda do well, he adds, many Tunisians are set on the path towards a more tolerant, open society. “If Ennahda try to close bars and impose a strict interpretation of Islamic values it will never work, as there is already a sense that a democracy of sorts exists here.”