Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

the domination of the salafis and other more radical, conservative elements represented in
its political base?
Regardless of the direction Ennahdha takes over the long term, in the short term it
is unlikely to be in a position to dictate unilaterally the contents of Tunisia’s new
constitution, which itself represents a new social contract between Tunisia’s citizens and
their government, as Prudence Buxton emphasizes. With 89 out of 217 seats in the
Constituent Assembly, Ennahdha falls well short of a majority and is governing in
coalition with two secular parties, the Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol, which
combined hold 49 seats, giving the coalition a substantial majority of 138 seats or 64% of
the total. Therefore, Ennahdha will have to compromise with at least the more secular
orientation of its two coalition partners, and likely with other parties of the left not
represented in its coalition. Consequently, most observers who met with the SAIS Group
suggested that the preamble to the constitution would likely identify Tunisia as a
“Muslim and Arab nation,” more or less along the lines of its present constitution,
without incorporating more specifically Islamic principles in the body of the constitution.
Furthermore, as Amy Hamblin notes, the political parties represented in the Constituent
Assembly are looking ahead to the elections for a permanent parliament, tentatively
scheduled for late 2012. Ennahdha appears to have been so successful in the October
2011 vote in part because it was the best organized of the political parties that were also
widely viewed as having been in opposition to the Ben Ali regime. However, the secular
and left-of-center parties, previously divided and competing with one another, appear to
be coalescing, also distinguishing themselves more clearly from the widely discredited
parties that Ben Ali had allowed to function openly. Furthermore, fewer parties are likely
to enter in the next round, compared with more than 100 parties that took part in the
October 2011 elections, so many votes were cast for parties that failed to pass the
threshold necessary to have any of their candidates represented in the Constituent
Assembly. These changes could thereby enhance the influence of secular and left-ofcenter
parties in the parliament in comparison with the Constituent Assembly, even while
support for religious parties like Ennahdha may remain strong.
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