The New Arabs by Juan Cole

Author:Juan Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The right-wing religious Renaissance Party, despite having been virtually uprooted by Ben Ali, surprised many observers by reorganizing and establishing a nationwide campaign apparatus in less than a year; it became the single largest party in the Constituent Assembly. 20 It won 37 percent of the vote, but because of the electoral formula used, that victory ultimately translated into 42 percent of the seats. About 25 percent of the seats went to women, and most of those were members of Renaissance. Still, the Muslim religious party lacked a majority and would need to join a parliamentary coalition in order to form a government. The disciplined Renaissance Party, unlike its fractious left-liberal rivals, could put together a majority by allying with only two or three of the small secular parties, whereas a secular coalition of many small parties would have been unwieldy and unstable. Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic and Ben Jafar’s Democratic Forum were willing to give Renaissance a chance to prove its assertion of dedication to parliamentary norms. Marzouki, a physician and, as mentioned, human rights campaigner and longtime exile in France once jailed by Ben Ali, was elected president with an overwhelming 155 votes. Ben Jafar, also a physician by training, became speaker of the assembly. Renaissance took the prime ministership, which went to the photovoltaic engineer and journalist Hamadi Jebali, who had suffered fifteen years of harsh imprisonment under the old regime for his alleged role in a 1992 coup plot by the Renaissance Party, which he denied. The Tunisian press dubbed the three politicians “the Troika.” The Renaissance Party also acquired most of the key cabinet posts. Some observers saw this Renaissance-dominated coalition as an “Islamic Winter” succeeding the “Arab Spring.” Given the actual composition of Parliament and the choices of the majority of voters, however, this characterization is flawed. The Renaissance Party’s ascendancy was in part a quirk of the way parliamentary coalitions work, not a sign that the electorate was right of center. Many Tunisians told me the following spring that they suspected Qatar of having bankrolled the Renaissance campaign.

Leftists lamented the disarray and fragmentation in the ranks of the progressive parties, which had prevented them from forming a government even though they had done well in the aggregate. The youth movement was now split between the left and the religious right. The significant constituency among activist youth for political Islam tended to be absorbed by the Renaissance Party, though some turned out to be to the right of that party. The celebrated rapper El Général (Hamada Ben Amor) came out for sharia law (Muslim canon law) in the place of civil statute. The Renaissance victory showed the importance of Islamic norms for many voters, putting pressure on the Tunisian far left. The Tunisian Communist Workers Party, with only three seats in Parliament and a disproportionate base in university students and urban intellectuals, decided after the election to drop Communist from its name to attract more members. 21

Those youth activists most interested in human rights issues had their work cut out for them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.