Preliminary Counts Show Secular Party Leading in Tunisian Parliamentary Vote

[pampango]

Source: New York Times

The secular party Nidaa Tounes has won the largest number of seats in Tunisia’s parliamentary election, defeating its main rival, the Islamist party Ennahda, according to two analyses of results across the country.

Nidaa Tounes is 10 percentage points ahead of Ennahda. It has won 83 seats, with roughly 38 percent of the popular vote, to Ennahda’s 68 seats, representing about 31 percent of the vote, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported after tabulating its own count of 214 of the 217 parliamentary seats.

A parallel tabulation conducted by a Tunisian election observer organization, Mourakiboun, placed Nidaa Tounes at 37 percent and Ennahda at 28 percent. Those figures were based on a random sample of 1,001 polling centers across the country, with a margin of error of 2 percent and 1 percent on the respective totals.

Nidaa Tounes, led by former Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, 87, is an alliance of former government officials, liberals and secularists that was formed in 2012, largely in reaction to the post-revolutionary chaos under the Ennadha-led government. It was sharply critical of the Islamists’ performance and ran a campaign for a modern, secular society.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/world/africa/nidaa-tounes-ennahda-tunisian-parliamentary-election.html

---

If the preliminary analysis is accurate, "an alliance of liberals and secularists" will govern the country. This would be good news for Tunisia.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Islamists concede defeat in Tunisia’s historic vote

Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party on Monday conceded defeat to the secular Nidaa Tounes (Call of Tunisia) party in the country’s historic parliamentary elections and called for a coalition government.

“We have accepted this result, and congratulate the winner Nidaa Tounes,” Ennahda official, Lotfi Zitoun, told Reuters. However, he repeated the party's call for a new coalition including Ennahda. “We are calling once again for the formation of a unity government in the interest of the country.”

Earlier, a source from Nidaa Tounes claimed victory saying the secular party has won more than 80 seats in the new 217-member parliament against 67 seatch for Ennahda.

“According to the information we have, we should have around 80 seats,” Aida Klibi, a party spokeswoman, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/10/27/Tunisian-seculars-claim-lead-in-vote-count.html

[LeftishBrit]

2. Sounds like good news.

[RussBLib]

3. Tunisia is probably doing a better job of separation of state and church...

...than America is.