Friday, Oct 04, 2013
The extraordinary events in Tunisia last week give great hope to the Arab world. In a remarkable example of maturity, the democratically elected Islamist government will resign voluntarily, in order to ensure that the inclusive constitution, that it has spent a long time drafting, will be passed by two thirds of parliament, which requires the Al Nahda Islamists to be supported by the secular opposition.
The deal has been agreed upon by both sides, with the Islamist government and secular opposition both agreeing that the constitution should pass. Both sides have worked on the new constitution. At first, Al Nahda wanted to include Sharia in the constitution, but was blocked by the opposition and finally accepted it could not be included. Later, after two killings of secular politicians, the backlash against the Islamists gave the opposition enough confidence to challenge Al Nahda, who realised that they did not have enough votes to get the constitution through parliament. Therefore, Al Nahda offered to resign and hand over power to a technocrat government, as long as the opposition agreed to support the constitution. New elections will follow under the new constitution and political life will go on.
What is very important is what did not happen. The constitution was not drafted in a narrow party spirit by the Islamists. The government did not ram through a one-party vision of how the country should be run. When they sensed failure, the president did not dismiss the parliament and did not seek to rule through decree. The contrast with Egypt could not be more obvious, where former president Mohammad Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood took their year in office as an opportunity to try to ruthlessly exclude the rest of the political spectrum. The bitter backlash led to the second revolution and the current miserable state of Egyptian politics. Tunisia has shown how, when it is vital, such as when drafting a constitution, it is both possible and necessary to put national interest ahead of immediate party gain.
By Gulf News
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
