Tunisia: Provisional Results Suggest Islamists Advance · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

This post is part of our special coverage Tunisia Revolution 2011.
Provisional results of the October 23 election in Tunisia suggest that the Islamist party Ennahdha (The Renaissance) has won most of the votes. It is not clear if the party will obtain an overall majority. The Congress for the Republic came second, followed by the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties.
Lotfi Zitoun, a leader at Ennahdha, published his expectations on his Facebook page [ar]:
Counting the votes. Photo by the ONG I watch shared via Facebook
Alarabiya English tweets:
Islamist party says to get 60 seats in 217-member Tunisian assembly #Tunisia
This is according to the initial results in some of the electoral constituencies.
Though Rached Ghannoushi, head  of the Ennahdha, claims that his party is ”moderate,” once the initial results started to spread secularists expressed their worries and fears that conservatives might jeopardise the secular values of the Tunisian state. Here are some of their reactions on Twitter.
@hamdanih:
لوكان جا البوعزيزي حي راهو عاود حرق روحو..#tnelec
@FeveDeCacao: Musulmane…voir les islamistes accéder au pouvoir me fait froid dans le dos. J'espère avoir tort. #Libye #Tunisie #Tnelec
Other Tunisian citizens called for respecting and accepting the results.
Béhéeddine HAJRI writes [fr]:
après ce succès des premières élections libres .. maintenant le travail est lancé .. et au lieu d’insulter le peuple (c le cas malheureusement de la part de certains activistes qui se disent modernistes), il est grand temps d’analyser ces résultats .. de comprendre ce peuple pluriel ..
He adds:
respectons les voix des autres et avançons avec ce pays qui découvre tout un nouveau monde …
@JuveSimo tweets:
عندما اصطّف الشعب أمام الدوائر قالوا شعب مثقف وحضاري! وعندا اختار نفس الشعب النهضة تحوّل الى عربان متخلفة!! كفانا نفافا كفانا #tnelec
@IngMina_ tweets:
يا توانسي، اكبر امتحان ليك توا هو قبول النتائج حتى و لو كانت ضد اختيارك البارح #tunisia #tunisie #tnelec
It is worth mentioning, that counting the votes is still underway, and that they are expected to be released on Tuesday afternoon. Tunisians elected their representatives yesterday in the first democratic election of the so called Arab Spring.
This post is part of our special coverage Tunisia Revolution 2011.