Victory for Nidaa Tounes in preliminary Tunisian election results

Preliminary results for Sunday’s Tunisian parliamentary elections indicate the Nidaa Tounes party has defeated its rival, the Islamist Ennahda party.

Figures obtained by Anadolu news Agency show Nidaa Tounes ["Call of Tunisia"] with 38 percent, ahead of its rival, Ennahdha (“Renaissance”), with only 31 percent of the vote. The leader of Nidaa Tounes, the 87-year-old veteran of Tunisian politics, Beji Caid Elsebsi, is expected to be tasked with forming a new government.

Tunisia's Independent High Authority for Elections [ISIE] announced voter turnout for the election was 61.8 percent. But Chafik Sarsar, head of ISIE, warned the preliminary results published Sunday night might be inaccurate.

If the results are accurate, Nidaa Tounes would emerge as the largest bloc in parliament with 83 seats, pushing Ennahdha into second with 68.

Nidaa Tounes was set up in June 2012, as the expression of an unofficial alliance between loyalists to the overthrown Constitutional Democratic Rally, unionists, various leftists and a few independents.

Since its foundation, Nidaa Tounes has put itself forward as an alternative to the Ennahdha party and its allies in the troika government - a coalition between Ennahdha, the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties and the Congress for the Republic.

Ennahda’s election rallies were the largest of the campaign, but Nidaa Tounes did everything it could to mobilise its supporters during the parliamentary election.

This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.