A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Monday, May 5, 2014

Tunisia Passes Electoral Law

Tunisia's Constitutional Assembly has passed an Electoral Law, clearing the way for Parliamentary and Presidential elections later this year. The last two controversial provisions were resolved, with the Assembly supporting gender parity on electoral lists, but rejecting by one vote a provision that would have excluded officials of the Ben Ali regime; the Islamist Ennahda opposed the provision.

While Tunisia's revolutionary transition has not been smooth, it is by far the most successful of the Arab Spring transitions, with Islamists and secularists eventually finding grounds for compromise. If elections are held peacefully this year it will complete a transition to a constitutional system hammered out across the political spectrum.

1 comment:

David Mack said...

It is to the credit of An Nahda Party that it opposed a version of the political exclusion law, despite having been perhaps the principal political victim of officials of the Ben Ali regime. Unlike Iraq, Egypt and Libya, Tunisia's future will not be permanently constrained by a blanket refusal to use the talents and experience of all those who were involved to some degree in the previous government.