“We will accept the results of elections whatever they may be. We will congratulate the winner and we hope they would congratulate us if we won,” Rached Ghannouchi told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“Our choice is a government of national unity because the country needs to continue on the path of consensus... Ennahda is in talks with the (major) parties to create alliances in the constituent assembly.”
The constituent assembly will write a new constitution before new parliamentary and parliamentary elections, and is also expected to form a new interim government in Tunisia. The election, set to be Tunisia’s first ever free vote, follows an uprising that ousted ruler of 23 years Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali earlier this year.
The Ennahda party, banned under Ben Ali, is expected to come out on top in Sunday’s vote, but faces competition from several secular parties, which also suffered in the former police state.
Meanwhile, Tunisians abroad thronged to vote Thursday in the first post-Arab Spring free election, three days before their compatriots at home go to the polls to turn the page on 23 years of autocratic rule.
Like many who voted on Thursday, historic opposition figure Kamel Jendoubi, who heads the overall election organizing body ISIE, was tearful as he voted at a consulate in Paris.
“I dreamt of this day, I couldn’t imagine but now I’m living it!” he said. “If we came here a few months ago, a few years ago, we’d simply be thrown out, it wasn’t our house.”
Expat Tunisians choose 18 of the 217 members of the constituent assembly, voting until Saturday in six “constituencies”: two in France, one in Italy, one in Germany, one in North America and one for other Arab nations.
Tunisians living in former colonial ruler France will elect 10 of these 18 seats, in an assembly that will be tasked with drafting a new constitution.
Pollsters expect the Ennahda (Renaissance) to win most votes.
Almost a million Tunisians live abroad, with up to 500,000 in France alone.
About 500 people wearing thick coats against the autumn chill queued patiently outside the consulate at the Porte de Pantin on Paris’ outskirts.
