At Tunis airport arrivals terminal last month, hundreds of Tunisians gathered waving flags to greet a special guest – not a sports legend or popstar, but a former minister from ousted President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s government.

Three years after Tunisia’s ‘Jasmine Revolution’ forced the autocrat out and set the North African country on path to democracy, Ben Ali regime old guard are not only making a comeback but are poised again to win elected posts.

After approving a new constitution this year, Tunisia will hold its second parliamentary election since the revolt this month. In November, it will hold presidential elections that are seen as a test of its newly found democracy.

Ben Ali’s old guard are poised again to win elected posts

Prominent among candidates for the legislature and for the presidency are former officials and Cabinet ministers from the Ben Ali regime, who are pitting themselves against the Islamist party that governed after Tunisia’s first free election.

After the 2011 revolution, Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia and most of his aides and ministers disappeared, were imprisoned and prevented from participating in the first elections won by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda.

The return of the so-called ‘Remnants’ to the political scene has opened up debate over the legacy of the 2011 revolution that helped inspire the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in Libya, Egypt and Syria and eventually led Tunisia to become a model for democratic change.

“All we want is to build Tunisia without exclusion, it must be a new phase in which everyone contributes in building the country,” Ben Ali’s former transport minister Abderrahim Zouari said. “I hope to go beyond this debate because Tunisia needs all its men and women.”