Tunisia's New Elections Law Guaranteed Opposition a Voice

By Michael Collins Dunn

Tunisia's March 20 elections for a new Chamber of Deputies (parliament) were conducted under a revised electoral law guaranteeing that opposition parties always will be represented. While scarcely creating a Western-style democracy, this marked a new phase in President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's cautious but persistent effort to broaden political pluralism in his country. Some see the revised law as a reward to secular opposition parties for supporting the government during its confrontation with the al-Nahda Islamist movement in 1991 and 1992.

Al-Nahda's leadership now is exiled or imprisoned, charged with seeking to assassinate Ben Ali and overthrow his government. In their absence, al-Nahda's rank-and-file supporters have shown few signs of continuing strength, although there could be a future resurgence. A healthy, growing economy—unusual in North Africa at the moment—has helped reduce the appeal of extremist groups in Tunisia.

The IMF recently highlighted Tunisia's efforts at creating a market economy as a model for the developing world. President Ben Ali has stepped up efforts to create a fully convertible currency and recently announced that a major goal of his party is to move Tunisia out of the developing and into the developed world.

Habib Bourguiba set Tunisia on the road to a multi-party system in the 1980s. When Ben Ali replaced Bourguiba in 1987, he pledged greater democratization. Some independents and opposition party figures won election to parliament in by-elections. But in the 1989 parliamentary elections,the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) won all the seats. Al-Nahda supporters, barred from running as a party but standing as independent lists, ran second, well ahead of the secular opposition parties, but took no seats. Since 1989 the RCD has controlled all the seats in parliament.

Some of the opposition parties originally had supported al-Nahda's efforts to be recognized as a party. Then, confronted with the government's evidence of a secret underground organization to infiltrate the military and other institutions, the parties backed the government crackdown on the Islamists. The opposition parties insisted, however, that it was time to move forward with political liberalization.

Ben Ali is a cautious man. Neighboring Algeria's experiment in fully unrestricted multi-party politics-and its collapse by military intervention-seems to have made him more so. The kind of rapid democratization which failed in Algeria was never really considered in Tunisia. Instead, the preferred approach has been a greater voice for the opposition, but continued dominance by the ruling party.

A healthy economy has helped reduce the appeal of extremist groups.

The RCD is the direct heir of Bourguiba's old Neo-Destour Party, which has had several different names in the interim. It long was the single party in Tunisia, and still has a nationwide cell structure. There are party cells built around the workplace, unions, and other institutions as well as local neighborhood cells. Although the economy is moving away from the old statist model and there are competing parties, the RCD still controls a great deal of patronage support and has a national infrastructure that other parties cannot hope to match.

Given such strength through patronage, it is little wonder that it has tended to win all the seats. Observers believe the government was embarrassed that the opposition did not win any seats at all in 1989. As one put it, it had become necessary not to rig the elections so the ruling party would win, but to "rig" the system so as to guarantee a voice for the opposition.

Since the confrontation with al-Nahda, the opposition parties have been building up their organizations in anticipation of the 1994 elections. One major lack was the absence of opposition publications, mostly for financial reasons. However, the parties now have created weekly or monthly journalistic mouthpieces.

The new electoral law adopted at the end of 1993 creates a mixed system combining constituency-based "first past the post" seats with a number chosen by proportional representation. One innovative aspect is that the proportionally chosen seats are selected from parties that lost in one or more districts. In practice this means that parties other than the RCD will be guaranteed seats.

The old constituency-based parliament of 141 seats has been increased to a body of 163 MPs, based on approximately one seat for every 52,500 Tunisians. However, the electoral districts are allocated on the basis of one deputy per 60,000 inhabitants. The result of this dichotomy in allocation of seats vs. districts was to create a parliament of 163 seats, of which 144 are district-based. The other 19 seats are to be allocated proportionally.

Proportionally Chosen Seats

Those 19 seats will be distributed among parties which lost, through a complex formula under which slates which do not win a majority in a given district will have their votes counted toward a national total of non-winning slates' votes. Then the 19 seats will be proportionally allocated according to the national totals by party of these non-winning slates. Should the RCD lose seats in a given district, it too could be included in these proportionally distributed seats.

The 144 seats are divided among 25 electoral districts. The two largest cities, Tunis and Sfax, have two districts each. The other 21 districts coincide with the other 21 governorates (provinces). Every district has at least two seats. Tunis District One has eight seats and Tunis District Two has six, Kairouan District has nine seats.

Among other innovations in the campaign was a government-provided subsidy to all candidates. Subsidies for the legislative campaign were determined at a rate of 30 dinars per every 1,000 voters in the legislative district, and paid to the party (or independent) list. Half of the subsidy was distributed before the election to all registered candidates. The second half is to be distributed after the election to those legislative candidates who received at least 3 percent of the vote (presidential candidates who receive at least 5 percent of the vote also receive a second subsidy, although this was academic in the 1994 election since only one presidential candidate was running.)

The presidential campaign coincided with the legislative campaign, but all seven legal parties supported the re-election of Ben Ali, as did the UGTT trade union congress and other major legal institutions. The former head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), Moncef Marzouki, announced that he intended to run against Ben Ali and even asked Ben Ali to make sure he won the right. But the electoral law requires that a presidential candidate receive the support of a set number of either parliamentarians or municipality councils. Since all but one municipality council and all of parliament currently are controlled by the RCD, Marzouki's quixotic campaign had little chance of recognition and in fact he never formally submitted his name. Marzouki recently resigned from the LTDH when a moderate leadership was elected willing to work with the government in trying to alleviate human rights abuses.

As expected, the RCD won all the constituency seats, with some 97 percent of the nationwide vote. Ben Ali's unopposed re-election vote was said to have won 99 percent of the vote. But the opposition did win some 65,000 votes and all 19 of the proportional seats.

The RCD ran candidates for all 144 seats in all 25 districts. The only other party to stand candidates for every possible seat was the Movement of Democratic Socialists (MDS). The MDS was originally created as an alternative to Bourguiba. It has had some difficulty in explaining how it differs from the Ben Ali version of the RCD-except for being out of power. Its original founder, Ahmed Mestiri, quit after the 1989 elections. Mohamed Moaada led it into the campaign. With slates in every district, the MDS won the most opposition votes-over 30,000-and 10 of the 19 seats.

The next largest party in terms of candidates offered was the Unionist Democratic Union (UDU). This party with a redundant-sounding name was formally approved in 1988 and defines itself as based on Arab unity within a loose confederation taking cognizance of the strengths of individual states. It fielded 130 candidates in 23 of the 25 districts for a fairly full challenge across the board. But it did not do as well as its candidacies might have implied, winning about 9,000 votes and 3 seats.

The Popular Unity Party (PUP), led by Mohamed Belhaj Amor, is another older anti-Bourguiba formation. It fielded 118 candidates in 19 of the 25 districts, winning fewer than 8,400 votes and 2 seats.

The Ettajdid Party (so called in English and French from the Arabic al-Tajdid, "Renewal") was created in 1993 as the successor to the Tunisian Communist Party (PCT), led by the pioneer Tunisian Communist Mohamed Harmel. Claiming descent from a Communist Party formed in 1910, it has an ancestry even older than the RCD's. It fielded only 71 candidates in 12 districts. That the left still has strength was demonstrated by the fact that despite being fourth among the opposition in number of candidates running, it placed second after the MDS in results, winning over 11,000 votes and 4 of the 19 opposition seats. Its longtime leader Mohamed Harmel will sit in the new parliament.

The Progressive Socialist Rally, a leftist party approved in 1988, presented 50 candidates on lists in 8 districts, and the Social Liberal Party, a liberal democratic party also approved in 1988, had 35 candidates in 7 districts. Each won fewer than 2,000 votes and no seats.

The post-election parliament will look more like Egypt's-dominated by one party but with a present and vocal opposition-than a genuine multi-party system. Given Ben Ali's natural caution, concerns about the experiences with al-Nahda, and alarm about the results of Algeria's experiment in instant democratization, it is, however, a genuine step forward-one which the secular opposition has welcomed even while eagerly hoping for a greater role in the future.

Michael Collins Dunn is senior analyst of The International Estimate, Inc. and editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate.