TUNIS – Leader of Ennahda Rachid Ghannouchi, the Islamist party which won Tunisia’s first free election, appealed for calm in the town where the Arab Spring began.
He accused forces linked to ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of fanning violence there. Party officials said coalition talks were already under way and they expected to form a new government within 10 days.
Troops fired in the air to disperse a crowd attacking government offices in Sidi Bouzid, where 10 months ago vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in a protest that ignited revolts around the Arab world.
Ennahda, which was banned for decades, will lead Tunisia’s new government after an election victory likely to set a template for other Middle Eastern states rocked by uprisings this year.
Ennahda has tried to reassure secularists by stressing it will not impose a Muslim moral code.
It will not impose the wearing of the Islamic headscarf, or hijab, on women because all attempts to do that in other Arab states have failed, Mr Ghannouchi said yesterday. Women would have jobs in the new government, he said, “whether they wear a veil or don’t wear a veil”. The Islamist party would honour an undertaking to finish writing a constitution within one year, he added, and would respect Tunisia’s international treaties when it forms a government.
He blamed the Sidi Bouzid clashes on forces connected with the former president.
The unrest was not linked directly to the Ennahda win, but to the fact that a party headed by a businessman popular in the town, a former supporter of Ben Ali, had been eliminated from the ballot over allegations of campaign finance violations.
Late on Thursday, after officials announced they would cancel several seats won by the Popular List, a crowd set fire to an Ennahda office and the office of the mayor. The party had been running in fourth place in the election, according to preliminary results, before its seats were cancelled.
An interior ministry source said curfew would be imposed in the town from 7pm to 5am local time
Mr Ghannouchi paid tribute to the town’s role in the revolution. – (Reuters)