David McLaughlin was an election observer with the National Democratic Institute for the Tunisian presidential election.
In the gathering dusk of the Arab Spring, Tunisia remains the brightest light and hope for democrats and democracy in North Africa.
Sunday's presidential elections – the first free vote since independence from France in 1956 – reinforce that, of any of the countries that overthrew their dictators and autocrats, Tunisia offers the best chance for a lasting democratic culture to take root.
It is no accident. Tunisia has taken a deliberate, measured, and mostly consensual approach following the January, 2011, ouster of the former strongman regime of Ben Ali.
This is not without risks. Economic progress has not automatically followed this embracing of democracy. Many young Tunisians are unemployed with dismal immediate prospects. A small country of just over 10 million, Tunisia is squeezed between Algeria on the east and Libya on the west, both restless and unstable.
But Tunisians seem determined to chart a different path – more secular, open, and inclusive than an Arab country to date.
The guarantor of this path seems to be the core commitment of Tunisians to free and fair elections. More precisely, to democracy itself and its institutions.
Yes, there is some election fatigue after first, a constituent assembly, an interim government, and legislative elections less than a month ago. A second presidential round will be formally announced in the next day or so when official tabulations are released. The two front-runners, out of 27 initial candidates, will now endure a run-off ballot in December.
But the process of elections management by Tunisia's independent elections authority is proving not just durable but robust by international standards. Independent international observation missions, as well as Tunisian civil society organizations, are all confirming a fair, free, and unbiased election process.
Polling stations opened on time. Ballot boxes were properly sealed. The voting registry was up-to-date. Ballot papers were transparently counted. The army and police guarded polling centers with guns but offered smiles and handshakes to voters. No security issues were reported.
Even the choice of polling centres, primary schools, seem designed to make voting open and accessible. Brightly painted in light blue, yellow or white, many with colourful murals and children's drawings, would be familiar and comforting sights to any Canadian family.
Polling officials were rigorous in their application of election rules on voting. The process of signing the register, inking the left index finger, marking an X in the box of the candidate of choice, folding the paper twice, and placing it in the sealed, clear plastic ballot box for all to see became routine and comforting as the day wore on. Illiterate voters were not aided at the ballot box by friends or family. In one polling station I monitored, only four ballots out of 524 cast were declared invalid.
While elections in our country are supervised, here they are celebrated. This befits a fledgling democracy. But the results reflect an underlying tension within the Tunisian electorate: whether a concentration of political power in the office of the president is necessary to make economic progress.
This reflects the historical experience of Tunisia but also the results of October's legislative elections in which Nidda Tounes, the main secular party, took a plurality of seats under the proportional representation system. Its presidential candidate, 88-year old Mohamed Essebsi, who served as Tunisia's interim prime minister after the revolution, won yesterday's first round but appears to have done so with less support than anticipated. According to Tunisia's main civil society watchdog, which released its voting estimates this morning in Tunis, Mr. Essebsi won 38.8 per cent of the vote while his main rival, current president Moncef Marzouki, won 33.6 per cent of the vote despite some relative unpopularity.
The next round is likely to see a framing of 'democrats versus anti-democrats' rather than 'secular versus Islamists' as in other countries. This is because the second-place party in the legislature, the Islamic Enhaddi party, did not field a presidential candidate. Their support for a coalition government led by a prime minister in the legislature remains a deep unknown in Tunisian politics.
For democrats, Tunisia offers the prospect of stability and progress. But western democracies will need to pay it serious attention. Democratic progress must be accompanied by economic progress. Tunisia requires western aid and development beyond the significant democratic assistance countries like Canada have already given.
Tunisia has made remarkable progress in building durable democratic institutions and processes from scratch in just a few years. But the hard slogging is still to come. Canada needs to be there.