Tunisians at home and abroad voted in free elections for the first time over the weekend. Ennahda, a moderate Islamic party, is on track to win the largest number of seats, according to early domestic results. Party officials told reporters that Ennahda was ahead in nearly every voting district, and it expects to receive over half of the vote when the final results are tallied.
So far, the Tunisian electoral commission reports that Ennahda has won 15 out of 39 domestic seats in a 217-member assembly meant to write a new constitution. Together with the results announced Monday from Tunisians living abroad, Ennahda now has 24 out of 57 seats total, or just over 42 percent.
These elections are the first prompted by the "Arab Spring" revolutions. In January, Tunisia's longstanding dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted.
Voter turnout was a significant victory in itself. An estimated 90 percent of the country's 4.1 million registered voters flocked to Sunday's polls, which have been praised by international observers.
Bechir Blagui, the founder of human rights advocacy group Free Tunisia, described Tunisia as being a mix of cultures: European, Muslim and Arabic.
"I believe they have no choice but to be moderate," Blagui said of Tunisia's government.
There were six polling stations in the U.S., including one in Los Angeles.
"It was a great moment," Blagui said of the election, with 288 people showing up to vote in L.A.
The final results from Sunday's elections could boost other Islamist parties running in elections in North Africa and the Middle East.
Ennahda, which had long been suppressed by the previous regime, was the best organized party in the election.
The next most popular party, the Congress for the Republic, is a distant second so far with just 10 seats.
The results of the domestic seats were from 726,000 voters from five of the 27 electoral districts inside Tunisia and included the large cities of Sfax and Sousse.
"The voting process was marked by peaceful and enthusiastic participation, generally transparent procedures, and a popular confidence about Tunisia's democratic transition," said a statement by the Carter Center, which observed the contests.
Results, however, were being released in a trickle. Election officials said the painstaking nature of the counting process has caused the delay.
"The mechanism for tallying requires a lot of effort and time because all the votes in a district are taken to one place and this is for security reasons," said Boubker Bethabet, the secretary general of the election commission.
He added that, in many cases, poll officials sealed the tally sheets inside the ballot boxes after the initial count in the voting stations. The boxes can only be reopened in the presence of representatives of the more than 80 political parties involved in the vote.
Tunisia is hailed as a trendsetter of the so-called "Arab Spring," energizing similar dictatorship-toppling revolutions in other Arab countries, including Egypt and Libya. Egypt’s first round of parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in late November. Libya’s national council announced that it will hold elections in the near future after longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi was killed last week.
WEIGH IN:
What are the politics of the Ennahda party? How did the other parties fare at the polls? What are the next steps in creating a new Tunisian government? Will high voter turnout be replicated in Egypt and Libya? Will Tunisia’s win set the trend for victory of Islamic political parties in other countries’ elections? How does this all fit into the larger context of the ‘Arab Spring?’
Guests:
Bechir Blagui, founder of Free Tunisia, an advocacy organization for human rights, political freedom and economic development in Tunisia; Blagui also organized a Los Angeles polling station for the Tunisian election (288 Tunisian-Americans cast a ballot there)
This story incorporates information from the Associated Press.
