Moises Saman for The New York Times
Tunisians waited to vote at a school in the Tadamon district of Tunis on Sunday.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 23, 2011
TUNIS — Millions of Tunisians cast votes on Sunday for an assembly to draft a new constitution, in a burst of pride and hope that after inspiring the regional revolt that is still shaking the Arab world, their small country could now lead the way to democracy.
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Moises Saman for The New York Times
An election observer took notes at a voting site in a school in the Akouda district of Tunis.
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“Tunisians showed the world how to make a peaceful revolution without icons, without ideology, and now we are going to show the world how we can build a real democracy,” Marcel Marzouki, founder of a liberal political party and former dissident exile, said as he waited in a long line outside a polling place in the coastal town of Sousse. “This will have a real impact in places like Libya and Egypt and Syria, after the fall of its regime. The whole Arab world is watching.”
After 10 months of anxiety and street protests since the sudden uprising that forced their former president, the autocrat Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, to flee the country, Tunisians standing in orderly lines to vote expressed confidence that, for the first time in their history, an honest count of their ballots would determine the country’s future.
Many were sure their votes would change Tunisia for the better, regardless of who won, and some predicted an almost magical transformation. “There is going to be social justice, freedom, democracy, and they are going to tackle the unemployment issue,” said Mohamed Fezai, an unemployed 30-year-old college graduate.
“Today is the day of independence,” said Amin Ganhouba, 30, a technician. “Today we got our freedom, and our dignity, from the simple act of voting.”
At least one woman celebrated a vote she cast at random. Fatima Toumi, 52, an illiterate housewife, said, beaming with pride, that she had done her civic duty but did not know which party’s box she had checked. “Whatever I pick doesn’t matter,” she said. “I hope it will improve the situation of Tunisia’s youth.”Tunisia’s moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, was widely expected to win at least a plurality of the vote, and its founder, Rachid Ghannouchi, declared last week that it would win a majority. Many voters said that in the final days of the campaign the essential choice came down to a vote for Ennahda or against it.
Ennahda had a long history of opposition to the dictatorship before Mr. Ben Ali’s persecution eviscerated it in the 1990s, and its leaders have said that they hope to establish a durable, pluralistic democracy that will protect the rights of individuals and minorities from whoever is in power. They cite the model of Turkey, a secular democracy now governed by a party with an Islamic identity. Ennahda has also pledged to form a unity government with Tunisia’s liberal parties that would rule by consensus until democratic institutions are well established.
Ennahda supporters, however, were divided over how much regulation of personal morality the party should seek to impose. They said they hoped that Muslims might be free to adopt Islamic dress and pray without persecution, but that women would be able to reject the Islamic veil and that Tunisians could choose to buy alcohol.
“We don’t want the Islamists to attack the secularists, or vice versa,” said Belhsan Menzi, 31, an Ennahda supporter waiting to vote in Tadamon, a working-class neighborhood. “Ennahda has been persecuted for 40 years. It is high time we should be governed by an Islamist party.”
His friend Lotfi Nasri, 35, disagreed, arguing that Ennahda should seek to ban alcohol sales and require women to wear an Islamic head scarf, on a model closer to the one used in Saudi Arabia. If Ennahda wins power, he said, “it will be more of an Islamic country.” Others complained that Tunisia’s liberal parties supported its current decriminalization of prostitution or said they expected Ennahda to crack down on profanity or blasphemy in the popular culture.
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Tunisians lined up to cast their votes at a school in Tunis on Sunday.
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Financing Questions Shadow Tunisian Vote, First of Arab Spring (October 23, 2011)
Times Topic: Tunisia
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From luxury resorts to the most crowded slums, the voting appeared to run smoothly. The interim government deployed Tunisian solders to watch over polling places from the outside, and voters waited patiently in long lines for an hour or more in many locations. In less affluent and more culturally conservative precincts, voters voluntarily segregated themselves into one line for men and another for women.
Tunisia is using a proportional representation, or “list,” system that allocates seats to candidates on the basis of votes for their party roster, so that the names listed first have the best chance of winning seats. Voting rules required each party to alternate men and women on its roster of candidates so that half the candidates were women. But Tunisian newspapers reported Sunday that the parties had put women at the top of fewer than one in 10 district lists.
The uprising that unseated Mr. Ben Ali began when the fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the impoverished inland town of Sidi Bouzid in an act of protest at his lack of opportunity and the disrespect of the police.
On Sunday, his mother, Manoubia Bouazizi, 53, called the elections “a moment of victory for my son, who died defending dignity and liberty.”
“Nothing would have happened if my son had not reacted against voicelessness and a lack of respect,” she said in an interview with Reuters. “I hope the people who are going to govern will be able to keep this message in mind and give consideration to all Tunisians, including the poor.”
Noting the revolts still raging across the Arab world that were set off by her son’s immolation, she added, “He is no longer the son of Tunisia, he is the son of the whole world.”
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