Tunisia: From Dictatorship to Democracy

Wall Street Journal

In Tunisia's first elections since the nation toppled its leader and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings in January, much larger-than-expected crowds turned out to vote in what looks likely to be the freest and fairest elections ever held in the Middle East.

More important than the matter of who wins Sunday will be the process of carrying out a democratic election in a region that has mostly known dictators for decades, a process that Tunisians were proudly willing to wait in long lines to see through.

"Our goal is to join the democratic world," said Walid Sellami, a 27-year-old financial consultant voting in an upscale Tunisian neighborhood. "No one cares about the lines. We're just happy to be voting."

Tunisians will elect a 218-seat constitutional assembly, which will appoint an interim government and have one year to rewrite the constitution. Tunisia's Islamist Nahda Party is broadly expected to win a solid victory.

The election's impact may only be enhanced by the death this week of Moammar Gadhafi, the third and longest-running autocrat to be brought down by the protests that began 10 months ago in Tunisia.

Democracy activists across the region hope that a successful vote here could galvanize pro-democracy movements that have flagged amid violent regime crackdowns, as in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, and by a pushback by old-guard counterrevolutionary forces, as in Egypt.