The big surprise that emerged that has shaken Tunisia’s new political environment is the showing of Alridha Chaabiya (Full Name: The People’s Petition for Freedom, Justice and Development), led by TV mogul Mohamed Hechmi Hamdi, who has spent much of his life in London.
The last 48 hours have had all the tension of the last 20 or so minutes of a football final or cricket match where both sides are evenly placed but battling it out to win. By Wednesday evening Alridha had moved into third place in terms of seats, with 22 compared to CPR’s 23. As the results continued to trickle on Thursday morning it edged one seat ahead of the center-left Congress for the Republic (CPR) led by Moncef Marzouki, who may become Tunisia’s next president, then was again overtaken by it. Then both won an extra seat apiece. So it continued.
No one saw it coming. Before the elections, the party seen as the principal opponent of Ennahda was the secularist and centrist Progressive Democrat Party (PDP). It was thought that together with its allies it might win enough votes to push Ennahda into opposition. In fact, PDP slumped so badly at the polls that the party leadership is expected to be forced to resign.
Alridha’s showing has left Tunisia’s politicians and pundits baffled and, and by the way they are now raging at its unforeseen success, clearly embarrassed. It drew almost no media attention during the campaign as if it were not a serious party, either because its founder lived abroad or because he had been a one-time ally of the ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and therefore bound to fail.
Indeed the whole campaign process largely bypassed it. Yet come the ballot, tens of thousands of Tunisians voted for it. What the pundits and others forgot is that it had an entry into Tunisian homes via his popular Al-Mustakillah satellite TV station.
The party’s success has blown away the notion that choice before the Tunisian voters was between Islam and secularism. It is clear that Alridha can tap into popular vote.
In Sidi Bouzid, a town wholly ignored until a young fruit and vegetable seller set fire to himself in December after being harassed by police and triggered the Tunisian revolution, Alridha outperformed Ennahda. That can in part be put down to the fact that Hamdi also comes from Sidi Bouzid, although the party had a number of other key cards.
Hamdi offered free health service to all Tunisians, welfare payments of 200 dinars (SR520) to any of the country’s one million unemployed if they agreed to community service and an extra two billion dinars into the economy. Like Ennahda too, he added a dose of religion to his politics, although not as much.
The more important pull is that, as a southerner and his southern accent, he resonates with the still largely ignored south.
“Ah, the southerner,” said Ahmed, the taxi driver in Tunis on Thursday when informed of the success of Alridha — and surprised by it. “Maybe I should have voted for him,” he thought aloud, adding that he had not voted at all because he did not like Ennahda and since it was going to win, voting was a waste of time. “They are all like Ben Ali,” he said.
That view goes some way to explain Alridha’s success. Many poorer Tunisians feel the main parties, Ennahda included, are part of a political elite, albeit a new one, but an elite nonetheless. The media is also seen as part of it.
The media boycott may even have played into his hands, making him seem all the more outsider and therefore all the more attractive to those poorer sections of society who are a majority of the population.
Alridha’ showing has clearly rattled the mainstream parties. “We will not be inviting Alridha Chaabiya to work with us,” said Hamadi Jebali, Ennahda’s secretary-general and its choice for prime minister, on Thursday. Likewise, there were growing calls Thursday for Alridha’s wins to be annulled on the grounds that it had used Hamdi’s TV station to promote itself, illegal under the election rules. But that is not going unchallenged. On Thursday morning there was a large crowd of demonstrators outside the court in Sidi Bouzid demanding an end to what they called a smear campaign against Hamdi.
Jebali’s comment suggests that Ennahda is particularly worried, and with reason. It saw itself as the prime voice of the dispossessed. It cannot take that for granted any more.
For the moment, Alridha’s showing appears to have had the effect of rallying the mainstream parties, at least in condemnation. It may be that the Electoral Commission decides to take seats away from it, although that will incense those who voted for Hamdi’s party. All it will do is make him a martyr and the party even more popular.
One thing is for sure: Hamdi has put down his marker for the future. The media is not going to ignore him again.
