Tunis - Nabil Zaghdoud
Rachid El-Ghannouchi
‘Ennahda’ party, who won the elections in the Assembly, confirmed that it will conduct series of discussions to establish institutions to represent all the parties in Tunisia, and form a coalition
government without suspending any party.
Tunisia's Islamic Ennahda Party has started coalition talks with major parties as it takes lead in the early results of the country's historic elections.
Leftist parties, including Ettakatol, say they have entered talks with the once-banned Ennahda Party for the formation of an interim coalition government in Tunisia.
The Tunisian electoral commission announced on Tuesday that the Ennahda Party won 18 out of 44 domestic seats so far in a 217-member Constituent Assembly.
Despite winning 40 percent of the seats in the assembly, results so far indicate that Ennahda Party failed to win outright majority, meaning a coalition must be formed, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
"We will not exclude any party, independent personality or social movement,'' said Abdel Hamid Jelassi, Ennahda's campaign manager.
“We were once the victims of a politics of exclusion and our goal is to create a government of national unity,'' he added.
Another popular party, the Congress for the Republic, is a distant second with just 10 seats.
On Sunday, Tunisians voted for a 217-member assembly from among more than 11,000 candidates.
The Sunday election was the first in Tunisia since the ouster of ousted dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali in January.
Ennahda's win was a remarkable turnaround for a party which just 10 months ago had to operate underground because of a government ban which had put hundreds of followers in prison.
In a slick and well-funded campaign, the party tapped into a desire among ordinary Tunisians to be able to express their faith freely after years of secularist repression.
Western diplomats say Ennahda is largely funded by Tunisian businessmen, which they say means the party will pursue pro-market economic policies.
In comments quoted by Novosti news agency, Chairman of the Russian Foreign Affairs Committee, Senator, Mikhail Markelov said that "It is necessary to wait until the formation of the new constitution and the new government, in order to be able to assess the situation in Tunisia.”
He said, that this might take a whole year. He said that Ennahda party doesn’t adopt extremism theories, thus Tunis will be witnessing a reform of a democratic country if they follow the steps of the Justice and Development party in Turkey.