Is Tunisia’s Moderate Center in Danger of Collapse?
Wilson Center – Yasir Abalah
The attack by Islamic extremists on the Bardo National Museum in Tunis that killed 20 foreign
tourists and 3 Tunisians is tragic in more ways than the horrendous act itself. The chief political
victim may well be the moderate, secular-Islamist center that has been holding the country
together and made possible its successful transition to democracy so far.
The collapse of this moderate center would also call into question the soundness of the basic
Western assumption that democracy is the best antidote to rising Islamic extremism in the Arab
world.
Tunisia is the one and only country so far to emerge from the Arab Spring far more democratic
than ever before in its history. But it is also the Arab country that has sent the largest number of
jihadis to fight for ISIS and other similar groups in Syria and Iraq. The government calculates
3,000 Tunisians have gone and that it has prevented another 9,000 from leaving.
If there is any evidence that democracy serves to reduce Islamic extremism, it is hard to find so
far in the Tunisian example. If anything, the opposite appears to be true: democracy has given
space and voice not only to secular and Islamic democrats but to anti-democrats of both
persuasions as well. The result has been a polarization of Tunisian society that has turned a
growing number of both secularists and Islamists into uncompromising militants of opposing
faiths.
Tunisia rightfully lays claim to having given birth not only to the Arab Spring but to the only
successful transition to democracy. The string of uprisings against authoritarian Arab rulers
began with the self-immolation of a distraught fruit and vegetable street vendor in the
backwater town of Sidi Bouzid in December 2010. This touched off nationwide protests that in
less than a month led to the downfall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled for his life
to Saudi Arabia after 24 years in power.
Democracy suddenly flourished and produced a successful, if sometimes rocky, transition to
the freest and fairest elections of representative bodies since the country’s independence from
French colonial rule in 1956. A bewildering array of new parties competed for the 217 seats in
the National Assembly elected in October 2011, but it was the Islamic party, Ennahda, that came
in first winning 89 of the total.
Absent from this burgeoning new democratic order right from the beginning were hardline
fundamentalist Salafis who resorted almost immediately to tactics of intimidation to close down
bars serving alcohol and Western-influenced art shows while demanding women to ware veils.
In April 2011, seven months before the first elections, the most militant of them launched Ansar
al-Sharia, which dedicated to the use of political terrorism such as the failed attack on the
parliament building and successful one on the Bardo Museum.
Meanwhile, Ennhada was discovering the costs of democracy to its own standing. In order to
govern, it had to accept entering a coalition with two militantly secular parties, forcing it to
make numerous concessions in the writing of a new constitution. It gave up on its hope for
2
creating an Islamic state and agreed to drop any mention of shari’a, Islamic law, as a
fundamental constitutional principle.
Its political moderation and pragmatism did not stop there. When public sentiment turned
against Ennahda in 2013, its highly pragmatic leader, Rached Ghannouchi, convinced his party
to give up power and even approve a law allowing its hardline secularist enemies from the Ben
Ali era to return to politics. To assuage secularists’ fears, Ennahda also renounced running for
the presidential election in late 2014 that was won by the 88-year-old Mohamed Beji Caid
Essebsi, who had served in various past governments and stands as a personification of the
return of politicians from the old order.
In the 2014 parliamentary elections, Essebsi ‘s party—Nidaa Tounes—won 37 percent of the
popular vote, the exact same percentage that Ennahda had won in the 2011 National
Constituent Assembly election, although Nidaa Tounes ended up with three fewer seats (86
seats). Nidaa Tounes campaigned on a vehemently anti-Islamic platform aimed at rallying
Tunisia’s secularists to roundly defeat Ennahda. Still, the moderate Islamic party managed to
garner almost 28 percent of the vote and 69 seats.
The reaction of Nidaa Tounes to having only a plurality of votes stands in sharp contrast to that
of Ennahda facing the same dilemma in 2011.
Ennahda had quickly decided to look for secular partners to form an Islamic-secular coalition,
the “troika” as it was called, in the name of national unity and stability. The three parties
divvied up the top positions. While the prime minister was from Ennhada, the country’s
president and assembly speaker were leaders of the two secular parties in the troika.
By contrast, Essebsi and his Nidaa Tounes made no attempt whatsoever to share power with
Ennhada. On the contrary, they sought to shut the Islamists out of any leadership role in the
latest government. The new prime minister, Habib Essid, is technically an independent but was
Essebsi’s interior minister when he was prime minister of the transitional government in 2011.
Essid was also a high-ranking security official under the ousted President Ben Ali. The speaker
of the new parliament, Mohamed Ennaceur, is a Nidaa Tounes vice president.
As for forming a government, Nidaa Tounes went to great lengths to avoid forming a secularIslamist
coalition similar to Ennahda’s troika. Essid’s initial list of proposed ministers contained
not a single Ennhada figure, but it failed to win enough votes in parliament. His second cabinet
included just one Ennahda member, Zied Ladhari, who was given the junior ministry of
employment. This was sufficient, however, to gain Ennahda’s support, clearing the way for
parliament to vote in the present government early last month.
How long Ennhada can afford politically to remain with only a symbolic role in a vehemently
anti-Islamic government remains to be seen. It has already lost 10 percent of its support among
voters as a result of leading the government between 2011 and 2013. Two of its most militant
Islamists, Habib Ellouze and Sadok Chourou, left the party last year in disillusionment with
their experience as deputies in the national assembly. With the attack on tourists, Islamic
terrorists have signaled their intent to work for the destruction of the current secular-dominated
government that Ennahda has endorsed.
3
What is clear already is that the moderate center of Tunisia politics built upon an entente
between the moderate Islamist Ennhada and secularist parties is frayed. And it now faces
challenges that may well cause the weakening of democracy in the one Arab country the United
States and Europe have pinned all their hopes upon.
