Tunisia election may be win for main secular party

Tunisia’s main secular party said Monday it expected to garner the largest share of seats in parliamentary polling held a day earlier, based on preliminary tallies and exit polls.

If borne out by official tallies, the result would mark a substantial defeat for the Islamist Ennahda party. After scoring strongly in the previous parliamentary vote, the party’s ruling coalition broke down last year amid political infighting, but pre-election polls had suggested it might perform well in Sunday’s vote.

No single party, however, was expected to win a majority of the 217 parliamentary seats. Once finalized, the results will usher in a round of coalition negotiations, with a number of smaller parties poised to act as power brokers in the formation of a government. Tallies were being released piecemeal, with a final official count expected by midweek.

A spokeswoman for the secular Nida Tounes party, Aida Klibi, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying on Monday that the party was thought to have won about 80 seats, compared to about 60 for Ennahda. The agency cited an Ennahda representative as acknowledging the party had “probably” been outpolled, but holding off on any concession until the official results were in.

Turnout was strong and voting went peacefully in Sunday’s historic balloting, which was part of Tunisia’s continuing political transition after the revolution that threw out a longtime strongman ruler more than three years ago.

The North African nation, while struggling with unemployment and a low-level Islamist insurgency, has fared far better in the wake of 2011’s “Arab Spring” revolts than have neighbors such as Libya, Syria and Egypt, which have been hit by varying degrees of turmoil.

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