The Federalist: Tunisian Islamists concede election defeat to secular party

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Tunisian Islamists concede election defeat to secular party

A woman walk past electoral campaign posters for the
parliamentary elections in Tunis, Tunisia.

Islamists Defeated in Tunisia

Wow!!! To think that a Muslim nation somehow managed to run their own affairs without the CIA illegally running guns to factions or Comrade Obama bombing the crap out of the country in an unconstitutional war. Maybe, just maybe, the world can somehow function without the U.S. trying to dictate how everyone should live.

(Reuters) - Tunisia's Ennahda party, the first Islamist movement to secure power after the 2011 "Arab Spring" revolts, conceded defeat on Monday in elections that are set to make its main secular rival the strongest force in parliament.

Official results from Sunday's elections - the second parliamentary vote since Tunisians set off uprisings across much of the Arab World by overthrowing autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali - were still to be announced.

But a senior official at Ennahda, which ruled in a coalition until it was forced to make way for a caretaker government during a political crisis at the start of this year, acknowledged defeat by the secular Nidaa Tounes party.

"We have accepted this result, and congratulate the winner Nidaa Tounes," the 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 party source said preliminary tallies showed the secular party had won 80 seats in the 217-member assembly, ahead of 67 secured by Ennahda.

"According to the preliminary results, we are in the lead and in a comfortable position," one Nidaa Tounes official said, without confirming figures given by the first source.

One of the most secular Arab countries, Tunisia has been hailed as an example of political compromise after overcoming a crisis between the secular and Islamist movements and approving a new constitution this year that allowed the elections.

Electoral authorities were due to give preliminary results later on Monday, but larger parties had observers at polling stations to oversee the initial counts, allowing them to tally results unofficially.

Ennahda, which espouses a pragmatic form of political Islam, won Tunisia's first free election in 2011 after Ben Ali fled protests against corruption and repression, and went into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The party formed a coalition government with two secular partners but had to stand aside in the crisis that erupted over the murder of two opposition leaders by Islamist militants.

During campaigning Ennahda cast itself as a party that learned from its mistakes, but Nidaa Tounes appeared to have capitalized on criticism that it had mismanaged the economy and had been lax in tackling hardline Islamists.

Read the full article . . . .

Waiting to vote.

Voter ID - What a concept.

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Commissioned as captain in the 1st South Carolina Regiment of the Continental Army. After seeing much action, he became an aide-de-camp to General Horatio Gates. He was captured by the British at the disastrous Battle of Camden in 1780. After recovering from his wounds, he was released in a prisoner exchange. In 1781 he fought under Lafayette in Virginia. Appointed by President George Washington to be the U.S. minister to Great Britain served as Envoy Extraordinary to Spain. The Federalist Party made him a candidate in the 1796 presidential election as the intended running-mate of John Adams. Served as Congressman and Governor of South Carolina. Served as a major general in the Army during the War of 1812.

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David Cobb, Federalist

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