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Tunisian Islamist leader seeks calm after unrest

29 October 2011 01:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The leader of the moderate Islamist party that won Tunisia’s first free elections called for calm Friday after protests erupted in the town where the country’s revolution began, APA reports quoting Associated Press.

Authorities called a curfew in the town of Sidi Bouzid, where a vegetable seller set himself ablaze in a protest that sparked nationwide protests and eventually led to uprisings across the Arab world. There was a night of unrest in the town after results of the Sunday election for a constituent assembly were announced.

Many residents were upset that their favorite candidate was docked seats in the constituent assembly â€” which will write the nation’s constitution â€” for electoral violations.

"We call for calm among the inhabitants of Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution which must be at the forefront of preserving the public good," said Rachid Ghannouchi, founder of the Ennahda, or Renaissance, party which took 90 of the assembly’s 217 seats.

The local Ennahda bureau was among buildings burned in the unrest. Police lobbed tear gas to disperse a crowd of up to 3,000 people on Thursday night and the army fired warning shots, according to town resident Mourad Barhoumi. Residents burned tires, pillaged some stores and torched a National Guard post and a state training center, he said.

Authorities on Friday imposed a 7 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew, Interior Ministry spokesman Hichem Meddeb said.

The protests were linked to the party coming in fourth in the voting â€” the Areedha Chaabiya, or Popular Petition party. Its leader, Hachemi Hamdi, of Sidi Bouzid, announced on national television that he was withdrawing the 19 seats his party won after the electoral commission invalidated six of its lists.

Hamdi, owner of the Mustaqila satellite television channel based in London, had broadcast promises to give Tunisians free health care, new factories and thousands of jobs.

Electoral officials ultimately invalidated five lists tarnished by financing violations and one led by a former member of the ruling RCD party â€” now banned.

Ghannouchi’s long-banned Ennahda party is expected to create a broad-based coalition as it works to form a government to replace interim leaders who have run Tunisia since ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14, chased away after a month of protests.

Potential partners are the Congress for the Republic party, founded in 2001 and which came in second place with 30 seats, and the third-placed Ettakatol party, which won 21 seats.

Congress for the Republic is headed by noted human rights activist Moncef Marzouki, a doctor who had lived in exile in Paris. Ettakatol, or the Democratic Forum for Labor and Freedoms, is led by Mustapha Ben Jaafar, also a doctor.

Ghannouchi, who spent more than two decades in exile in London, reiterated reassurances that his party would not impinge on women’s rights in this Muslim Arab country known for its modernity.

"The program aims to strengthen the role of women, on the social as well as political level," he said.

Many Tunisian have feared a setback with a rise to power of Ennahda, banned by Ben Ali and ultimately by his predecessor, Tunisia’s first president Habib Bourguiba.