After Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahda conceded defeat in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, there were no fireworks, concerts or cheering rallies outside the headquarters of its rival, the secular Nidaa Tounes alliance.

Instead it was Ennahda’s leader Rached Ghannounchi who ap­peared before jubilant supporters to give what looked more like a victory address than a concession speech, yesterday.

Ennahda’s defeat was a blow to the first Islamist party to come to power after the Arab Spring revolts of 2011, and Ghannounchi may have been putting on a brave face after a loss attributed to his party’s performance in government.

But Nidaa Tounes’s subdued celebration says more about the complicated task the secularists face in forming a government with Islamists firmly entrenched in Tunisia’s young democracy after the overthrow of the autocratic Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

Tunisia has avoided the chaos that has engulfed several of its neighbours following the Arab Spring, but it badly needs stability. Its democracy has progressed and it has a new constitution after a political crisis last year. But the North African state must still deal with tough economic reforms and growing Islamist militancy.

Nidaa Tounes, an alliance of former Ben Ali officials with trade unionists and smaller parties that formed an anti-Islamist front, cannot rule alone. But its choice of partners and how it deals with Ennahda may determine Tunisia’s next steps.

Final results yesterday showed Nidaa Tounes won 85 seats in the 217-member assembly that will pick a new government against Ennahda’s 69 seats. The liberal UPL movement won 16 while the leftist Popular Front party won 15 places.

Nidaa Tounes leader Beji Caid Essebsi faces a tricky balance. Allying with secular parties gets a majority, but excluding a powerful rival like Ennahda may undermine Tunisia’s compromise-style politics and lead to deadlock.

With presidential elections next month – Essebsi is a leading candidate – getting too close to Ennahda also risks alienating voters who crossed the line to vote for Nidaa Tounes as a way to punish Islamists for their messy two years in power.

“Nidaa’s options are limited,” said Tunisian newspaper editor and columnist Zied Krichen.

“An alliance with the smaller secular parties will be fragile and could fall apart at any moment. The second option is an alliance with Ennahda.”

Nearly four years after the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia is being praised as a model of transition, with political rivals overcoming differences over the role of Islam and the return of old regime officials to make democracy work.

Ennahda won the first post-Ben Ali free election to form a coalition government. But a crisis over the murder of two opposition leaders and the handling of Islamist extremists sparked a crisis that eventually forced it to step aside for a caretaker government.

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