With the secular party Nidaa Tounes winning the most seats in Tunisia’s parliamentary elections on Monday and the Islamist Ennahda party, its main rival, conceding defeat and accepting the results, the small north-African country has produced a historic moment in the region and offered Arabs two paramount lessons within a period of three years, commented Taoufik Bouachrine, the editor of the Moroccan newspaper Akhbar Al Youm.

From 2011 to Monday, Tunisians have taught Arabs how to revolt against an autocrat by peaceful means, how to overthrow him in 17 days with no weapons and no car bombs – just by chanting “Dégage” or leave. And now, “Green Tunisia” is once again teaching Arabs how to move out of a revolution into peace, and from tyranny into democracy, all smoothly and civilly, without a coup, blood, arrests or civil wars.

Nidaa Tounes, a newly-formed secular party led by the 87-year-old Beji Caid Essebsi, won 83 seats in the 217-member assembly, ahead of the Islamist Ennahda party led by Rashid Ghannouchi, with 69 seats.

Nidaa Tounes’s victory came as a surprise to many analysts who expected nothing more than second place in the second free election since the 2011 uprising that overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The new party came first with 40 per cent of the vote, knocking into second place the Islamist party which, three years ago, won the elections and led a coalition government for two years but had to step down against a backdrop of hard economic and political pressures.

After the 2011 uprising, radical leftists sought to vote for a law, at the constituent assembly, that would ban figures from the old regime from political participation. But rational people, including Ghannouchi, refused to go down the road that threw Libya into turmoil. This is why Tunisia has given the best lessons to the Arab Spring countries and learnt from the worst mistakes of Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi and Libya’s rebels.

Three things explain Ennahda’s defeat in the recent contest. First, the Islamist party was voted into office in a post-revolt Tunisia amid wide expectations, and so it was only natural for it to be punished by the electorate as their frustration ran high and their patience wore thin three years after a revolution that chanted “bread, freedom and human dignity”.

Second, the protest vote against Ennahda benefited Nidaa Tounes, which was in opposition.

Third, Ennahda is transitioning from a fundamentalist party into a conservative party that accepts the rules of democracy and pluralism. This ideological revision has cost it a segment of its traditional supporters who are motivated by religious slogans, yet failed to earn it new audience on account of purely political factors.

The London-based online newspaper Rai Al Youm said in an editorial that the Tunisian people heaved a sigh of relief when the election results were announced. Tunisians were quite concerned about Ennahda dominating the political process, which reflected on the average turnout of 62 per cent.

Tunisians were not fooled by the shiny promises of political parties and decided instead to punish many, including the troika that led the country’s transitional period, but failed to fare well on the economic and security levels, the paper said.

Political Islam was dealt a major blow after Ennahda failed to win the vote.

In fact, had it not stepped down a few months ago for a technocrat caretaker government, the cost would have been greater at the recent elections.

According to the paper, Mr Ghannouchi’s biggest mistake was when, under pressure from Moncef Marzouki and some of Ennahda’s allies abroad, he backtracked on his intention to align with Mr Essebsi and appoint him as president after the 2011 elections, prompting him into the defiant move of forming the Nidaa Tounes group and taking the government away from Ennahda.

Now, Mr Essebsi emerges as the strongest candidate in the presidential election due in November and he stands a good chance of winning it after the fall of President Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic that got only two per cent of the vote and the defeat of its main ally, Ennahda party.

Translated by Abdelhafid Ezzoitni.

aezzouitni@thenational.ae