TUNIS: Tunisia's Islamic Ennahda party prepared for coalition talks Tuesday as early results showed it dominating the Arab Spring's first free elections.
Ennahda took 15 of the 39 seats from five domestic polling districts in the new constitution-writing assembly, the ISIE elections body announced, stressing the provisional nature of the tally.
And results announced Monday showed Ennahda winning half of the 18 seats reserved for expatriate assembly representatives in an early vote held abroad last week.
This meant Ennahda had taken 24 of the 57 seats accounted for so far in the 217-member assembly that will rewrite Tunisia's constitution and appoint a caretaker government.
There were 27 polling districts in total on Tunisian soil, and six abroad.
“We will publish the results piecemeal. The mechanisms of counting demand time,” ISIE secretary general Boubaker Bethabet said in Tunis.
The provisional results for the eastern coastal cities of Sousse and Sfax, Tunisia's second city, as well as Jendouba in the northwest and Kebili, a desert town in the centre, put the leftist Congress for the Republic (CPR) in second place with six seats.
It was followed by the Petition for Justice and Development, a list led by independent candidate Hachmi Haamdi, a rich London-based businessman, with five seats, and the leftist Ettakatol with four.
The Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) followed with two seats, as did The Initiative, a party founded by a former minister in the cabinet of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali who was ousted in a popular uprising in January.
Massive numbers of voters Sunday elected members of the new assembly that will have interim authority to write laws and pass budgets.
It will decide on the country's system of government and how to guarantee basic liberties, including women's rights, which many in Tunisia fear Ennahda would seek to diminish despite its assurances to the contrary.
Ennahda has already claimed to have taken the biggest block of votes, between 30 and 40 per cent, hailing the start of what is expected to be complicated negotiations for a majority coalition.
To form a majority, Ennahda will have to negotiate with the next biggest parties, all on the leftist, liberal side of the political spectrum.
CPR leader Moncef Marzouki has insisted that no firm agreement was made in pre-poll talks with Ennahda that saw other leftist parties accuse his party of seeking “a pact with the devil”.
But he defended the need to form a broad alliance to strengthen the assembly and give the caretaker government “the means to govern”.
For its part, Ettakatol had refused all pre-poll approaches while insisting on its intention to be part of a national unity government.
The centre-left PDP party, tipped as Ennahda's main challenger before the vote, conceded defeat on Monday.
Analysts have told AFP that Ennahda, even in a majority alliance, would be unable to “dictate” its programme to the assembly, having no choice but to appease its alliance partners, a moderate-minded society, and the international community on whose investment and tourism the country relies heavily. Leftist parties may also seek to form a majority bloc against Ennahda.
The Modernist Demoratic Pole, a grouping of five liberal parties, said Tuesday that no official coalition talks have started, but stressed it would seek an alliance of democratic parties.
“We need the biggest possible force to represent and protect modernist values,” leader Ahmed Brahim told AFP.
Ennahda says it models itself on the ruling AKP party in Turkey, another Muslim-majority country which, like Tunisia to date, is a secular state.
But its critics accuse the party of preaching modernism in public and radicalism in the mosques.
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