Sarah Yerkes
68 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
the south and the interior o the country,
from where the revolution would later
emerge. Political competition was
nonexistent, and potential challengers to
Ben Ali’s ruling party, the Democratic
Constitutional Rally, were either banned
outright or forced to operate under
restrictions so severe as to permanently
keep them on the sidelines. Those who
ran afoul o the regime were imprisoned
and tortured.
Leaving this dismal record behind was
not easy, and in the Ärst years after Ben
Ali’s ouster, the country endured serious
setbacks. Debates on the role o religion
in public life were particularly divisive.
Ben Ali’s regime had prided itsel on its
secular and progressive approach to wom-
en’s rights in a country where 99 percent
o the population is Sunni Muslim.
When a popular Islamist political move-
ment, Ennahda, emerged in the 1980s,
Ben Ali promptly banned it and impris-
oned or exiled tens o thousands o its
members. But when Tunisians voted for a
constituent assembly to draft a new,
postrevolutionary constitution in the fall
o 2011—the country’s Ärst-ever demo-
cratic election—Ennahda received the
most votes o any party, setting up a
Äerce Äght over the direction the transi-
tion. Among the most contentious issues
was women’s standing in civic and
political life. For Ennahda, women were
“complementary” to men—but that term
angered non-Islamists, who feared that
writing it into the constitution would
open a back door to gender discrimina-
tion. The critics eventually prevailed.
But the constitution-drafting process had
exposed painful cleavages within Tuni-
sian society.
Ennahda’s win in the 2011 election
allowed it to form a three-way governing
alliance with two smaller, secular parties,
imposing a semblance o order on the
postrevolutionary chaos. But beneath the
surface, the situation remained unstable,
in part because many secularists were as
afraid o Ennahda’s Islamist agenda as
they were o a return to authoritarianism.
In 2013, frustration with the Ennahda-led
government culminated in a national
crisis. In February o that year, Islamist
extremists murdered the prominent
leftist opposition leader Chokri Belaid.
The assassination sparked mass protests,
with many accusing the government o
standing by in the face o violent extrem-
ism. The Tunisian General Labor Union,
or ³¡¡, called its Ärst general strike
since 1978, bringing the country to a
standstill for days. When another leftist
leader, Mohamed Brahmi, was assassi-
nated a few months later, more large-
scale demonstrations followed. Protesters
were now calling for the Constituent
Assembly to dissolve.
The turmoil o 2013 could have easily
derailed the entire transition process.
That it did not was largely due to the
work o four powerful civil society
organizations—the ³¡¡, the country’s
bar association, its largest employers’
association, and a human rights group—
which came together for talks in the
summer o 2013. The National Dialogue
Quartet, as the group came to be known,
represented constituencies with widely
diering interests, but its members soon
agreed on a path forward, calling for a
new electoral law, a new prime minister
and cabinet, and the adoption o the
long-delayed constitution. It then medi-
ated a national dialogue among the major
political parties. The talks convinced
Ennahda to step down and brought a
new, technocratic government to power.