Almost four years have passed since the outbreak of protests – the Jasmine Revolution – that brought down the thieving regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Enough has happened in the country to make one wary of undiluted optimism. Yet, it’s important not to overlook the significance of what happened immediately after the result of the parliamentary elections was announced on Tuesday.

At the time of writing, the strong indications are that the secularist party, Nidaa Tounes (Call for Tunisia, a broad alliance including experienced technocrats and the trade union movement), has won a relative majority of parliamentary seats, with around 38 per cent of the vote. The Islamist Ennahda, which had won the 2011 elections, came second, with circa 32 per cent.

It’s not yet clear whether Nidaa Tounes will attempt to form a coalition government with Ennahda, or whether it will seek an agreement with a set of smaller secularist parties. We might have to wait till December.

Even without knowing the complexion of the incoming Tunisian government, however, there is a lot to make one sit up. Ennahda was quick to concede defeat and publicly congratulate the victorious leader, Beji Caid Essebsi. But there is more to notice than that.

Some background: In mid-October, a Pew survey had showed that the enthusiasm displayed for democracy in 2012 (63 per cent) had slumped: only 48 per cent preferred democracy to any other form of government. Moreover, when asked whether the country’s problems called for democratic government or a strongman, only 38 per cent chose democracy, down from 61 per cent two years ago. Most wagered on the strongman: 59 per cent, up from 37 per cent.

Tunisia seemed to be going the way of Egypt. And partly for similar reasons. The Ennahda government (2011-2014) was widely deemed to have some responsibility for the spread of violence, and two political assassinations, by other Islamist groups. At the very least it was accused of not doing enough to prevent and punish violence; but Ennahda was also suspected, in many quarters, of direct complicity.

Ennahda seemed to be going the way of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood even though it had been elected on a platform designed to make it seem like Turkey’s modern Justice and Development Party, which, over the previous decade, had pulled the country from the IMF’s doors and towards several years of record economic growth.

Despite the promises to halve the 18 per cent unemployment figure, the economy continued to decline. Frequent protests and political turbulence led to capital flight, not just by foreign investors; some Tunisian manufacturers moved, lock, stock and barrel, to Morocco.

The environment was fertile for Islamist radicalisation. Tunisian women hailing a taxi sometimes found themselves turned away because they were not wearing a veil. The ubiquitous unlicensed street vendors came to include many selling Islamist paraphernalia. Tunisian recruits for the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, also known as Isis) have been estimated at 3,000, a disproportionately high number for a small country.

The Pew survey results, therefore, had a political-economic background. However, even as the survey indicated a waning of faith in democracy, it also showed a waning of trust in the economic competence of the Islamists.

It should not have been a complete surprise. The 2012 survey, with its high scores of trust in democratisation, came in the wake of the Islamist electoral victory with 37 per cent of the vote. The 2014 survey came with the indication – almost perfectly confirmed by this week’s electoral result – that Ennahda had lost six per cent of its popular support.

As the survey indicated a waning of faith in democracy, it also showed a waning of trust in the economic competence of the Islamists

It lost support despite departing from the example of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in one significant way. In the face of mounting political and economic instability, it did not cling to power. In January, it had in fact ceded government to technocrats. The events of a few months before in Egypt – violence and eventual popular army-led coup against the Islamists – almost certainly contributed to Ennahda’s decision.

In all of this, there are at least three significant points. The first is that faith in democracy does not necessarily go hand in hand with secularisation.

In Tunisia, the popularity of an overtly, well-organised confessional political party declined in tandem with faith in democracy. The turnout in the election was 60 per cent – not bad by Euro-American standards; but it does point to a growing segment of the electorate that is turned off by both the main ideological alternatives.

Second, Ennahda did not merely concede defeat once the result became clear. One of its high officials also offered an explanation. So many of the party’s leaders had spent long periods in prison, he said, that they did not have enough experience of government.

In itself, that is a humdrum diagnosis that many armchair pundits offered as a prediction before Ennahda ever took over government. What is significant is Ennahda itself offered it. It shows two things. There is the acknowledgement of failure in government, not just defeat at the polls (an acknowledgement that would put to shame many European political parties prone to blame electoral losses on lack of communication rather than administrative failures).

More importantly, there is the acknowledgement that government requires secular competences, not merely a social blueprint derived from scripture. Obvious enough, in one sense, but significant coming from an Islamist party.

Finally, there is the feedback effect. Just as the events of 2011 in Tunisia influenced those in Egypt and elsewhere, the events of 2013 in Egypt influenced those in Tunisia. Will we therefore see the results and aftermath of the 2014 Tunisian elections replicated elsewhere?

As usual, it depends. The victory of Nidaa Tounes was a mild surprise. In any case, it happened only because a coalition of secular politicians were ready to put aside their differences (including of class interests) to team up against the well-organised Islamist adversary. It is something that Egypt’s political liberals have yet to do. But, who knows, perhaps the Tunisian example might now prod them to do so.

Nidaa Tounes’s victory also depended on other factors. A relatively successful constitutional process. Laws that permitted technocrats and politicians who served under the old regime to enter the new political system.

(Let us not forget that Nidaa Tounes’s 87-year-old leader served as, among other things, the police minister of a police state, albeit five decades ago.) And laws that insulated the army from politics.

Those conditions are not all present in (say) Egypt or Libya. And we have yet to see whether they are sufficient for Tunisia to weather the steep economic challenges before the incoming government, which will need to regularise the black economy (meaning it will need to tax new swathes of voters) and reform a nepotistic, protectionist private sector.

Politically, however, Tunisia continues to blaze the way, illuminating possibilities that have so far eluded other Arab countries.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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