{"id":11749,"date":"2011-10-24T12:19:02","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T08:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=11749"},"modified":"2011-10-30T08:31:56","modified_gmt":"2011-10-30T04:31:56","slug":"news-analysis-tunisia-goes-to-the-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/breaking-views\/news-analysis-tunisia-goes-to-the-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"News Analysis: Tunisia Goes to the Polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"highslide\" onclick=\"return vz.expand(this)\" href=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/tunisia-2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11751\" title=\"tunisia 2\" src=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/tunisia-2-e1319444244166.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"498\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/tunisia-2-e1319444244166.jpg 498w, https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/tunisia-2-e1319444244166-145x92.jpg 145w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 498px) 100vw, 498px\" \/><\/a><strong>The Story?<\/strong>\u00a0 Tunisia has staged its first general election since President Zine al-Abidine was forced to flee the country.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Good turnout?<\/strong>\u00a0 Exceptional &#8211; more than 90 percent of the four million people plus entitled to vote went to the ballot box.<\/p>\n<p><strong>And the winner is?<\/strong> It&#8217;s not clear yet but the so-called moderate Islamist party Ennahada looks like being the leading party. It is likely, however, that they&#8217;ll have to form a coalition with one of the minor parties.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This would be the first electoral success by an Islamist party in the Arab world since&#8230;.?<\/strong> 2006 when Hamas won in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So what&#8217;s the order of business for the newly elected officials?<\/strong> Their first priority is to draft a new constitution to replace the one Ben Ali manipulated to entrench his power. The assembly will also appoint an interim government and set elections for a new president and parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEWS ANALYSIS: With their erstwhile leader rattling around a presumably luxurious villa in Jeddah, Tunisians have had their first shot at genuine democracy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[324,125,278,227,1639,4277,1808,18322],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}