Tunisia: The Arab Spring’s only good-news story
By Adnan R. Khan | Maclean's – 15 hours ago
Given the recent events in the Middle East, it’s hard to imagine anything fruitful blooming from the Arab Spring. Hopes ran high in 2011 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street seller, burdened by debt and hounded by corrupt officials, set himself on fire and, in the process, ignited the latent desire of young Arabs for change. Since then, chaos has unfolded: Radicals have risen in Syria, and military despots in Egypt.
But, later this month, Tunisians will go to the polls for the third time in three years, this time, to vote for a new president. It may not be closely watched by outsiders, but it will represent a flicker of hope that the Arab Spring is alive. There have been efforts to derail it. This week, al-Qaeda-linked militants sheltering in neighbouring Algeria attacked a busload of Tunisian soldiers in the country’s mountainous northwest—the latest in a flurry of extremist attacks on Tunisia’s nascent democracy. But if the past few weeks are any indication, the process should survive.
On Oct. 26, Tunisia held its second legislative elections in three years. Unlike elections in other Arab countries—Iraq, for instance—Tunisia’s was not marred by sectarian divides; nor, like Egypt, did it deepen the schism between secularists and Islamists. In what was a first in the Arab world after the Arab Spring, a faith-based party, Ennahda, politely handed power to its secular opponent, Nidaa Tounes. The secularists—a coalition of loyalists to ousted leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, liberals, and leftists—responded in kind. “We in Nidaa Tounes believe that the Ennahda movement has become a reality in the Tunisian political landscape,” a senior Nidaa Tounes member told Al Jazeera. “Therefore, we are meant to coexist.”
More: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/tunisia--the-arab-spring-s-only-good-news-story-191951789.html
A somewhat long but rather interesting article.
By Adnan R. Khan | Maclean's – 15 hours ago
Given the recent events in the Middle East, it’s hard to imagine anything fruitful blooming from the Arab Spring. Hopes ran high in 2011 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street seller, burdened by debt and hounded by corrupt officials, set himself on fire and, in the process, ignited the latent desire of young Arabs for change. Since then, chaos has unfolded: Radicals have risen in Syria, and military despots in Egypt.
But, later this month, Tunisians will go to the polls for the third time in three years, this time, to vote for a new president. It may not be closely watched by outsiders, but it will represent a flicker of hope that the Arab Spring is alive. There have been efforts to derail it. This week, al-Qaeda-linked militants sheltering in neighbouring Algeria attacked a busload of Tunisian soldiers in the country’s mountainous northwest—the latest in a flurry of extremist attacks on Tunisia’s nascent democracy. But if the past few weeks are any indication, the process should survive.
On Oct. 26, Tunisia held its second legislative elections in three years. Unlike elections in other Arab countries—Iraq, for instance—Tunisia’s was not marred by sectarian divides; nor, like Egypt, did it deepen the schism between secularists and Islamists. In what was a first in the Arab world after the Arab Spring, a faith-based party, Ennahda, politely handed power to its secular opponent, Nidaa Tounes. The secularists—a coalition of loyalists to ousted leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, liberals, and leftists—responded in kind. “We in Nidaa Tounes believe that the Ennahda movement has become a reality in the Tunisian political landscape,” a senior Nidaa Tounes member told Al Jazeera. “Therefore, we are meant to coexist.”
More: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/tunisia--the-arab-spring-s-only-good-news-story-191951789.html
A somewhat long but rather interesting article.