IB History Ennahda Party and Nidaa Tounes Notes

Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes: Islamists vs Secularists in the New Tunisia

1. Between 2011 and 2016, Tunisia's most powerful Islamist party and a broad secular coalition tested whether Ben Ali's fall could produce lasting power-sharing rather than a repeat of Egypt's polarised collapse.

Ennahda's Origins and Persecution

1. To understand the post-revolution political struggle, you need to know where Ennahda came from.
   1. The movement traces its roots to al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), founded in 1972 by Rached Ghannouchi and Abdelfattah Mourou.
   2. It drew inspiration from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and was energized further by the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
2. The movement was renamed the Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI) in 1981, then rebranded as Ennahda (meaning "renaissance") in 1989.
   1. Both names were attempts to operate within, or around, a political system that viewed Islamist organization as a threat.
3. Both Bourguiba and Ben Ali treated Ennahda as an existential threat to the secular state.
   1. Members were imprisoned, tortured, and driven abroad.
   2. Ghannouchi himself fled to London in 1989, where he would remain in exile for 22 years until the revolution made his return possible in 2011.

Ennahda's Election Victory and the Troika

1. After Ben Ali fled, Ennahda was legalized in March 2011.
   1. Its organizational strength, built through decades of underground activity and community networks, gave it a major advantage over newer, less established parties.
2. In the October 2011 National Constituent Assembly (NCA) elections, Ennahda won 89 of 217 seats, roughly 41% of the total.
   1. No other party came close.
   2. These were Tunisia's first free elections in decades, and the result reflected both genuine popular support and Ennahda's superior grassroots organization.
3. Because Ennahda fell short of an outright majority, it formed a coalition with two smaller parties: the Congress for the Republic (CPR) and Ettakatol.
   1. Formed in December 2011, this three-party arrangement became known as the troika.
4. The troika produced a power-sharing arrangement at the top: Ennahda's Hamadi Jebali became Prime Minister, while CPR leader Moncef Marzouki was elected President by the NCA.
   1. The arrangement was designed to reassure secular Tunisians that Ennahda would not monopolize power.
5. In practice, the troika struggled.
   1. The NCA was tasked with drafting a new constitution while also governing, and political tensions between Islamist and secular visions of the state slowed both tasks down.
   2. By 2013, the situation reached a breaking point.

The 2013 Political Crisis

1. Tunisia's democratic transition came close to collapse in 2013.
   1. Two political assassinations, months apart, brought the country to the edge of a crisis that threatened to replay Egypt's military takeover.

1. In the wake of the Brahmi assassination, a coalition of opposition parties formed the National Salvation Front (NSF).
   1. The NSF demanded that Ennahda resign from government immediately, drawing direct comparisons to Egypt, where the military had just ousted the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated President Morsi in July 2013.
2. Tunisia faced a genuine choice.
   1. One path led toward a military-backed removal of the elected Islamist government.
   2. The other required all sides to find a negotiated way out.
   3. What made Tunisia different from Egypt was that a negotiated solution actually emerged.

The National Dialogue Quartet

1. Four civil society organizations stepped in to broker a solution.
   1. The UGTT (the powerful trade union federation), UTICA (the employers’ confederation), the LTDH (human rights league), and the Order of Lawyers formed what became known as the National Dialogue Quartet.
   2. Their ability to bring together labor, business, civil liberties, and law made them uniquely credible mediators.
2. The Quartet's key achievement was convincing Ennahda to step down voluntarily.
   1. In September 2013, Ennahda agreed to hand power to a neutral technocratic government.
   2. This was an extraordinary concession: an elected government agreeing to step aside without a military coup or a revolution forcing it out.
3. The technocratic government was led by Mehdi Jomaa, an independent engineer with no party affiliation.
   1. Its job was narrow but critical: guide the country through the completion of the constitution and organize free elections.
4. The new constitution was adopted in January 2014, widely praised as one of the most progressive in the Arab world.
   1. The Quartet received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for their role in making this possible.

Nidaa Tounes and the 2014 Elections

1. While Ennahda navigated the crisis of 2013, a new political force had already emerged to challenge it.
   1. Nidaa Tounes ("Call of Tunisia") was founded in June 2012 by Beji Caid Essebsi, a veteran politician who had served under both Bourguiba and Ben Ali.
2. Nidaa Tounes positioned itself as a broad secular coalition, bringing together liberals, ex-RCD members, trade unionists, and leftists who shared one overriding goal: preventing Ennahda from dominating Tunisian politics.
   1. Its big-tent approach made it controversial, given that ex-RCD figures had served under Ben Ali, but also gave it broad electoral reach.
3. In the October 2014 parliamentary elections, Nidaa Tounes won the most seats, becoming the largest party in the new Assembly of the Representatives of the People.
   1. Ennahda came second.
4. In the presidential election that followed, Essebsi defeated the incumbent Marzouki with 56% of the vote to Marzouki's 44%.
   1. Essebsi became Tunisia's first democratically elected president.
   2. The 2014 elections mattered not just for who won, but for what they demonstrated.
   3. Power transferred peacefully from an Islamist-led government to a secular one through the ballot box.
5. Ennahda's response to defeat was equally significant.
   1. Rather than rejecting the results or moving into hardline opposition, the party chose accommodation.
   2. In 2015, Ennahda joined a coalition government led by Nidaa Tounes, showing that the two former rivals could share power despite years of confrontation.
   3. At its May 2016 congress, Ennahda formally separated its political activities from its religious ones, a major ideological shift.