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    October 27, 2011

Tunisian Islamists Win Landmark Election

   VOA News
   Hammadi Jebali, secretary-general of Ennahda, Tunisia's largest Islamic
   movement (file photo)
   Photo: AP
   Hammadi Jebali, secretary-general of Ennahda, Tunisia's largest Islamic
   movement (file photo)

   Tunisian authorities say the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party has won
   the country's first free elections, taking 90 of 217 assembly seats -
   three times the number won by its nearest rival.
   Ennahdha secured more than 41 percent of the vote and will dominate
   Tunisia's constituent assembly, tasked with writing a new constitution,
   appointing a president and forming a caretaker government.
   The center-left Congress for the Republic, CPR, a secular party founded
   by noted human rights activist Moncef Marzouki, placed second with 30
   seats. The third-place Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties, or
   Ettakatol, won 21.
   The two liberal groups have already begun talks on forming an interim
   unity government with Ennahdha, which was banned for decades.
   Late Thursday, violent protests broke out in the provincial town of
   Sidi Bouzid when hundreds of young people marched on Ennahdha's local
   headquarters after election officials invalidated the seats won by the
   rival Popular List party.
   The town is the birthplace of the popular uprising that ousted longtime
   President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and ignited the Arab Spring protests
   that have transformed the region.
   Ennahdha officials say the group intends to propose its secretary
   general, Hamadi Jebali, as the next head of Tunisia's government.
   The party's candidates have cited as a model the secular, pluralist
   democracy in Turkey, where the ruling AKP party also has an Islamist
   identity.
   Election observers predict that women could capture nearly one-third of
   the seats in the constituent assembly, a far larger proportion than in
   any Arab country.
   Tunisia's landmark election was widely considered free and fair.
   Sunday's vote came a little more than nine months after Tunisians
   overthrew Ben Ali.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.