November 03, 2014
I
suspect that the Tunisian parliamentary elections were the most significant
domestic and national political development in the history of the modern Arab
world since its creation a century ago. Here is why I say this, and also what I
believe we learn from the elections.
Never in ancient or modern Arab history has a citizenry of a country debated,
written, validated and then put into action a constitution that reflects
national values and also defines the organization of political life, the
exercise of public authority, and the rights of citizens. Tunisians experienced
some serious bumps in their transition to a constitutional democracy since they
overthrew the tyranny of President Zein El-Abedeen Ben Ali in early 2011.
Tunisians accomplished this while suffering from serious economic pressures and
social services disparities— especially among marginalized provincial
populations — which confirms their commitment to addressing their
socio-economic challenges through the participatory mechanisms of a pluralistic
democracy. This is in sharp contrast with the hysteria and hallucinatory
emotional excesses and fears that many Egyptians resorted to last year when
they called in the armed forces to remove Mohammad Morsi, the elected president
from the Muslim Brotherhood.
So the Tunisian experience since February 2011 offers evidence of three
critical phenomena: the capacity of the Tunisian people to peacefully overthrow
their former dictatorship, to affirm their desire to live in a pluralistic
democracy, and to manage their vulnerable transition without succumbing to
fear, greed, panic or chaos. Tunisians proved they were able to put their
democratic values into practice, according to their own priorities and
particularities.
The election victory of the new Nidaa Tounes party reflects a relatively
sophisticated response by those smaller parties and political groupings who
came together to form this alliance of former officials, secularists,
progressives and leftists. This contrasted with the dozens of smaller groups
that splintered the centrist-secular votes and allowed Ennahda to triumph in
the 2012 elections and lead the coalition government.
This suggests — like the South African transition to democracy did — that
members of the former regimes could be allowed to engage in political activity
in the new democratic era, but they have to play by the new rules of democratic
accountability and public legitimacy. It also indicates that politicians with
somewhat different legacies and values could work together for a greater
purpose than their own selfish incumbency on their own. That greater purpose
that has achieved the triumph of Nidaa Tounes seems to have been the desire to
defeat Ennahda, and to form a government that could reflect a degree of
consensus among different groups, rather than a winner-take-all mentality.
The performance of Ennahda is an important historical marker: An Islamist party
that won free democratic elections was allowed to rule at the head of a
coalition government, largely failed to achieve the important goals that voters
expected from it (jobs, economic expansion, security, social justice) then gave
in to popular demand and stepped down in favor of a transitional government.
This important precedent teaches Ennahda a valuable lesson about the realities
of democratic accountability — if you do not deliver on your promises, the
voters send you home. It also clarifies to the entire citizenry that Islamists
can participate in pluralistic democratic practices and live to compete
electorally another day after they lose a free and fair political contest.
Incumbent Islamists in Arab democracies were a novel sight in 2012 in Egypt and
Tunisia. In 2013, they both also revealed their amateurism in governance, as
they were unable to go beyond their sloganeering about Islam offering solutions
to society’s challenges and citizens’ aspirations. The incumbency, failures and
subsequent booting out of the Islamists democratically in Tunisia is the first
time that Arab citizens electorally achieved a core principle of established
Western democracies — to “throw the bums out” of office when the incumbents do
not deliver on citizen expectations.
So this Tunisian experience is also a historic inaugural implementation of the
principle of the consent of the governed, which has never pertained in Arab
societies in an organized, democratic, constitutional and civil manner. We can
be certain that the next prime minister — to be appointed only after the
presidential election next month — will pay much more attention than in
previous years to choosing an effective cabinet and prioritizing policies that
respond to genuine citizen needs.
The democratic transition in Tunisia remains young and vulnerable, but it is
indeed the first democratic transition in modern Arab history that has taken
root in an environment of sustained citizen activism. I and millions of others
hold out the hope that just as Tunisia sparked the series of Arab uprisings and
revolutions in the past nearly four years, so will this brave little country
lead the way again in prodding other Arabs to achieve a democratic transition,
rather than only to yearn for it.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was
founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for
Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. On
Twitter @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global