TUNIS: Tunisia holds its first multi-candidate presidential election on Sunday in the final stage of a post-revolution transition that has set it apart from the turmoil of other Arab Spring states.

Twenty-seven candidates are in the running, with former premier Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran of Tunisian politics whose anti-Islamist party Nidaa Tounes won an Oct 26 parliamentary election, the hot favourite.

Among his challengers are outgoing President Moncef Marzouki, several ministers who served under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s long-time ruler who was ousted in a 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab Spring, left-winger Hamma Hammami, business magnate Slim Riahi and a lone woman, magistrate Kalthoum Kannou.

A second round is to be contested at the end of December if the winner fails to secure an absolute majority.

Until the revolution the North African country had known only two heads of state: Habib Bourguiba, the “father of independence” from France in 1956, and then Ben Ali who deposed him in a Dec 7, 1987 coup.

Ben Ali held onto the president’s Palais de Carthage until the revolt forced him to take flight to Saudi Arabia on Jan 14, 2011.

To prevent another dictatorship, presidential powers have been restricted under a new constitution hammered out by political parties across the board and executive prerogatives transferred to a prime minister drawn from the winning party of parliamentary polls.

The clear front-runner despite his age, Essebsi has run on a campaign of “state prestige”, a slogan with wide appeal to Tunisians anxious for an end to instability.

Supporters argue he alone can stand up to the Islamists who held power in the post-Ben Ali era until his party’s election triumph last month, while critics charge he is out to restore the old regime, having served under both Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

Marzouki has been hammering home the argument that he is the only leader capable of preserving the gains of the uprising which swept the country between December 2010 and January 2011.

Coalition at stake

Moderate Islamist party Ennahda, which came second to Nidaa Tounes in the legislative election but denied its rival a working majority in parliament, is not running its own candidate and has invited its members “to elect a president who will guarantee democracy”.

Speculation has been rife on the make-up of a new government and the possibility of a coalition between Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda in spite of their fundamental differences.

Neither party has ruled out the prospect, with Essebsi saying Nidaa Tounes will await the outcome of the presidential poll before opening negotiations with other parties.

“The main thing at stake in the presidential election is the formation of a future coalition capable of naming a government and a stable majority for the next five years,” said independent analyst Selim Kharrat.

Nidaa Tounes and Essebsi “need a victory ... to be able on the one hand to have a president who comes from the party but also a head of government” as well as a parliamentary majority.

Opponents say such a scenario would amount to single-party domination of Tunisian politics.

But Kharrat says safeguards are in place to allow the democratic process to move forward, such as strong civil society groups.

Economic challenges

Serious challenges along the way, especially the 2013 assassination of two opposition politicians by suspected jihadists, have delayed by two years the process of establishing permanent institutions in Tunisia, with the presidential election as the final act.

But Tunisia has won international plaudits — despite security and economic setbacks over the past four years — for having largely steered clear of the violence, repression and lawlessness of fellow Arab Spring countries such as Libya. Whoever wins the election, tackling Tunisia’s faltering economy will be a top priority. After a revolution in which poverty was a leading cause, unemployment is running at 15 per cent.

“There are university graduates like me who have no choice,” said Slim Shimi, who has worked as a waiter in a coffee shop for five years since graduating with a degree in geography.

“The economy, which has perhaps been ignored or put to one side in the initial phase, must be tackled head-on because the economic challenges are there and are getting worse in some cases,” said Jean-Luc Bernasconi, the World Bank’s chief economist in Tunis.—AFP

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2014