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Three years after Tunisia’s revolution, the country’s elected government—an Islamist-led coalition known as the Troika—has resigned owing to pressure by secular opposition forces in the National Salvation Front (NSF). As they look toward the next general election, Tunisia’s secular parties, largely sidelined after the revolution, are seeking greater prominence in politics. To achieve this goal, they must tackle deep-seated challenges and find a way to cooperate more closely.

Tunisia’s Political Landscape

• Tunisian politics are more complex than a binary competition between secularists and Islamists. Secular parties’ ideological rivalries, strategic differences, and leadership divisions undermine their force in politics.
   
• After the 2011 revolution that ousted then president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, secular parties failed to form strong coalitions, develop regional networks, or create viable party platforms, often using anti-Islamist rhetoric to attract voters instead of offering solutions to Tunisia’s challenges. Some were perceived to have been co-opted by Ben Ali’s regime.
   
• Under the Troika, secular parties with a well-defined platform and ideological stance, especially regarding the ruling Islamist Ennahda party, proved more resilient than ideologically diverse parties or those relying on a popular leader to unite a fragmented base.
   
• Many secular parties lack internal democracy, with leaders making decisions unilaterally or with their cronies, who act in their self-interest.
   
• Generally, secular parties legalized before the revolution are experiencing a generational clash, with the old guard clinging to power and resisting structural reform, while parties legalized after the revolution lack a clear unifying vision and strategy.
   
• Secular voices like the Nidaa Tounes party and the Popular Front coalition, backed by major media outlets and civil society organizations, have gained popular support since the NSF forced the Troika’s resignation.

Recommendations for Tunisia’s Secular Parties

Move beyond anti-Islamist rhetoric and fix structural problems. Secular parties need to address their dependency on single-personality politics, lack of party platforms, ideological fragmentation, and resistance to a new generation of leaders. Failure to do so risks a gradual decrease in their current momentum.

Put aside old rivalries to create strong, lasting coalitions. Divisions and frictions will remain as long as secular leaders continue prioritizing personal ambitions or rivalries over unity and collaboration. To maximize their leverage, secular parties should form several coalitions based on common ideological principles and cooperate through the NSF to advance their shared interests.

Democratize from within. To promote party unity, leaders of secular parties should consider the views of all members, not just a small cadre of elites, when making decisions.

Introduction

The passage of Tunisia’s new constitution on January 26, 2014, and the transition to a government of technocrats has in many ways hit a reset button on Tunisian politics. For the three years since the revolution that ousted then president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, Tunisia has seen increasingly polarized debate over the constitution and the future political direction of the country.

The Islamist Ennahda party was illegal and harshly repressed under Ben Ali, but it has dominated Tunisian politics since his ouster. Now, secular parties are seeking greater prominence in Tunisia’s emerging political landscape.¹

The Islamist Ennahda party has dominated Tunisian politics since Ben Ali’s ouster.

Since 2012, secular parties have profited from a deteriorating economic situation and the emergence of religious violence, which has led wide sectors of the population to fear unchecked Islamism. Members of the National Salvation Front (NSF), an alliance of secular opposition forces, blamed Ennahda for the assassinations of two opposition figures in 2013, which stoked the fires of anti-Islamism in the country.

However, the secularists’ anti-Islamist discourse has been weakened by recent developments. In January 2014 Ennahda, then the ruling party, peacefully resigned as part of a compromise with the political opposition. This move, along with the finalization of the constitution, displayed that—contrary to the secularists’ proclamations—the Islamist-led government did not cling to power by all means.

Yet even in this new political climate, many secular parties still limit their strategy to proclaiming that they “saved” the country from the Islamists instead of focusing on developing convincing party platforms that address Tunisia’s underlying socioeconomic needs. This practice continues despite the fact that the experiences of secular opposition parties both under Ben Ali and after the revolution suggest that their focus on anti-Islamism is one of their greatest weaknesses. Relying on anti-Islamist rhetoric reflects not only these parties’ detachment from the population’s needs and expectations but also their lack of a strong unifying vision and strategy.

Indeed, secular opposition parties in Tunisia have long been fragmented because of both Ben Ali’s repressive policies and their own internal divisions. As a result of this disorganization, opposition parties were completely unprepared to step into the void when Ben Ali was forced out of power. Instead, many filled the postrevolutionary vacuum by returning to a deep-seated secular-Islamist divide that had dominated politics under Ben Ali. Their inability to form strong coalitions and their reliance on anti-Islamist rhetoric contributed to their poor performance in the first democratic election after the revolution.

Secular parties are approaching the next elections, currently scheduled for December 2014, in a more united way. They have created a number of coalitions, such as the Union for Tunisia, the Popular Front, and the NSF, which helped force the Ennahda government out of office. To ensure a better performance in the next elections, secular parties need to sustain a great deal of unity by addressing deep structural and leadership challenges.

Secular parties will have to go beyond resorting to fierce anti-Islamist rhetoric and instead propose concrete solutions to Tunisia’s socioeconomic and security challenges.

To maintain the momentum gained by the NSF’s success and become a consistent force for democratic change, secular parties will have to go beyond resorting to fierce anti-Islamist rhetoric and instead propose concrete solutions to Tunisia’s socioeconomic and security challenges. This approach should also include a reevaluation of the government that stepped down in January, a coalition between Ennahda and the secular Ettakatol and Congress for the Republic (CPR) parties known as the Troika. This regime has been fiercely criticized by the political opposition, but secular parties share the responsibility for many of the flaws of this cross-ideological experiment.

A History of Disunity

Opposition politics under Ben Ali were weak and fragmented. This is in part because the longtime leader was notorious for promoting fear of Islamism as a way of co-opting the opposition, ensuring that most secular parties feared the possibility of Islamist rule more than they opposed his regime.

But another factor that significantly weakened opposition politics was the fact that many secular opposition parties were created as a result of personal and strategic rivalries and not because they sought to introduce new voter constituencies.² Efforts to overcome divisions between Islamists and secularists, as well as among secularists, in order to challenge the Ben Ali regime existed but never gained momentum.

One such attempt at a united coalition, the October 18 Movement, was created in 2005. It included the CPR, Ettakatol, the secular Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), and the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party (now known as the Workers’ Party), as well as the Islamist Ennahda party. Although the movement’s members agreed on several foundational democratic principles, a senior leader of the group recalls that “it was from the very beginning strongly weakened by internal power struggles,”³ specifically citing tension between PDP leader Ahmed Nejib Chebbi and Ettakatol’s Mustapha Ben Jaafar, both of whom wanted to run as presidential candidates.

The movement also suffered from divisions over strategy and ideology. One of the October 18 Movement’s leaders, Moncef Marzouki—then an exiled opposition activist and now president of Tunisia—was occasionally critical of the coalition’s approach. According to another of the movement’s leaders, Marzouki “published several statements from exile showing that he did not really believe in the . . . [movement] but instead advocated upfront confrontation with the regime, further undermining the unity of the initiative.” Some members also eventually joined the left-wing Ettajdid party, which was more tolerant of the Ben Ali regime and did not believe in the October 18 Movement’s cross-ideological promises. Ettajdid particularly rejected cooperation between secularists and Islamists.

Weakened by decades of authoritarian rule, most parties did not participate in the protests during the 2011 revolution. Key opposition figures even backed the regime’s pledge to launch reforms over the population’s demand for full revolution. For example, when Ben Ali reaffirmed one day before his ousting from power that he would introduce socioeconomic reforms and that he did not intend to run for another term as president, PDP leader Chebbi affirmed that this step was “very good,” and most other opposition parties also welcomed Ben Ali’s move. The head of the Ettajdid party insisted that the president’s speech was “positive” and that it had “[answered] questions that were raised by our party.” Ben Jaafar was a bit more careful, maintaining that Ben Ali’s announcement “opens up possibilities” but that “intentions still have to be applied.” By contrast, then senior member of the CPR Mohamed Abbou rejected the speech, claiming that Ben Ali was “fooling the Tunisians with promises that have no tomorrow.”⁴

“Almost all political parties were completely detached from reality,” claimed a founding member of the CPR, one of two important secular opposition parties that were illegal under Ben Ali (the other being the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party). “They did not see the revolution coming, [and] when it happened parties did not play any significant role in it,” he continued, explaining that the parties’ “actions had always been based on the assumption that Ben Ali could never be beaten, and when he was gone . . . [they] did not know how to react.”

Following the revolution, old divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as within the secular camp reemerged.

Most secular parties refused to form coalitions, believing they had enough popular support to get into power by their own means. This confidence was especially surprising given the fact that the image of figures such as Chebbi and Ettajdid leader Ahmed Ibrahim was by then already partially tarnished because they had participated in the first interim government after the revolution, which was led by Ben Ali’s prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi. This administration included many people from the former regime and advocated institutional reforms over full revolution.

As the country approached legislative elections in October 2011, the PDP and Ettajdid were keen to propagate the notion that Ennahda would lead Tunisia back to the Middle Ages. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most secular parties rejected an initiative launched by Ettakatol shortly before the elections to create a national unity government that would consist of both secular and Islamist parties. Some even claimed that such an initiative could only be proposed by “traitors.”

In the end, however, those secular parties that adopted a more compromising stance toward the Islamists enjoyed greater success in the elections than those that relied on anti-Islamist rhetoric. The CPR received 8.7 percent of the vote, Ettakatol gained 7 percent, and a populist party known as the Popular Petition for Freedom, Justice, and Development won 6.7 percent. By contrast, the PDP was only able to attract roughly 4 percent of supporters.

Identity, religion, and anti-regime militancy proved central topics for voters.⁵ The Islamists, who gained 37 percent of the vote, were able to capitalize on each of these concerns. They built upon their unity, proximity to the Tunisian people, and legacy of uncompromising anti-regime militancy and fierce repression, as well as on a nationwide network that was quickly revived after the revolution. By comparison, the eight parties that garnered the most support after Ennahda received only a combined total of around 35 percent of the vote.⁶

The Troika Period: Weak Secularists and a Dominant Ennahda

After elections, Tunisia’s secular parties were weakened by fragmentation and poorly defined strategies toward the ruling Islamists. Most decided to join the opposition, where they struggled even according to the standards of opposition politics in Tunisia, which have traditionally been weak due to decades of authoritarian rule. Only the more compromising CPR and Ettakatol—secular parties that had not campaigned on fierce anti-Islamism—agreed to form a coalition with Ennahda.

Ennahda invited other parties to join the government and even offered senior militants such as Hamma Hammami, head of the Workers’ Party, ministerial positions—offers that were refused. Many secularists proclaimed that the Islamists would only try to dominate politics, an assertion they considered confirmed when Ennahda took all the key ministries for itself.

Ben Jaafar, who was appointed head of the Constituent Assembly, the body charged with creating a new constitution, and Moncef Marzouki, who became president, were also perceived as weak in comparison to Ennahda leaders. A June 2012 decision by Ennahda’s then prime minister Hamadi Jebali to extradite former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi Mahmoudi against Marzouki’s will—although the prerogative to do so actually lay with the president—was interpreted as evidence that Marzouki was incapable of influencing politics meaningfully. In some instances, however, Marzouki did manage to demonstrate leadership, such as when he ordered the presidential guard to secure the U.S. embassy in 2012 after the police and military proved unable to deal with an attack by violent Salafis.

Some Ennahda militants concede that a few of the party’s early decisions were a mistake. “We were too dominant at the beginning, we still believed at that time that the revolution was not final and that there might be counterrevolutions against us,” confirmed a high-ranking member of the movement.

Significantly, however, Ennahda’s dominance within the Troika was reinforced by the fragility of secular parties, both in government and opposition. “Ennahda’s strength was trust—people had a decade-long history of militancy, but we hardly knew each other, [and] the only person we all knew was Marzouki,” explained a CPR deputy. “We are actually still in the process of creating a party ideology, structure, and trust amongst each other.”

The CPR’s and Ettakatol’s trajectories in government are particularly interesting as they illustrate many of the challenges experienced by other secular parties, in particular when cooperating closely with Islamists. They are also important as the CPR and Ettakatol represent two different types of parties—one legalized before the revolution and the other afterward—that tend to vary in structural terms. Most new parties suffer from ideological fragmentation whereas old parties struggle to open themselves up to new voices. The CPR and Ettakatol therefore faced slightly different challenges while in government, an experience secular parties should learn from to avoid repeating past mistakes.

The CPR’s Divided Base

Most people who joined or supported the CPR after the revolution did so out of respect for the militancy of its figurehead, Marzouki, rather than for any concrete party line. Marzouki was known not only for his human rights activism but also for his pan-Arabist views, which attracted a wide range of supporters from mostly left-wing and nationalist but also Islamist-leaning backgrounds. Tensions between these various ideological currents quickly emerged when Marzouki left his position as secretary general of the CPR to become president in December 2011.

Marzouki’s departure caused a leadership vacuum that the CPR has struggled to fill. The party has had four different secretaries general since Marzouki. All but the current one, Imed Daimi, eventually left the CPR to create their own parties.⁷

The leadership’s inability to provide a vision for the movement reinforced rifts on the level of the CPR’s base as well as among its ideologically diverse deputies. The CPR’s leftists especially disapproved of the coalition with Ennahda. “We were particularly frustrated as we felt that the Islamist wing of [the] CPR became empowered very soon after the elections,” explained a former CPR member of parliament. “Ennahda was dealing more often with [those of the] CPR’s deputies who were close to the Islamists, they knew and trusted each other, that’s why many of us left. We felt sidelined.” Yet mass resignations from the CPR—to date, eighteen out of its initial 29 Constituent Assembly deputies have left the party—have only decreased the voice of the CPR in government and reinforced the leverage of its Islamist-leaning wing.

Hence, many secular parties have increasingly accused the CPR of being a “puppet” of the Islamists. They considered these accusations confirmed by the CPR’s reaction to the ousting of Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood–backed president of Egypt, in July 2013. The CPR unconditionally condemned Morsi’s fall as a coup d’état, while almost all other secular parties stressed the Muslim Brotherhood’s responsibility.

Marzouki’s refusal to categorically reject Ennahda and other Islamist movements in the region, however, should not be falsely equated with pro-Islamism and “complicity.” The CPR has also taken positions contrary to Ennahda on key issues—although it has been unable to realize most of them.

Ettakatol: Leadership Problems and Calls for Reform

In contrast to the CPR, Ettakatol has an ideologically more homogeneous membership due to its better-defined party line, which enabled it to present a more developed political program. Since his militancy under Ben Ali, Ben Jaafar has stood for social democratic values. Ettakatol prides itself on having been an observer party to the Socialist International, a global organization of socialist, labor, and social democratic parties, since 2004. In 2013, it became a permanent member.

During the electoral campaign, moreover, Ben Jaafar defended the secular nature of his party much more clearly than the nationalist Marzouki, who was already perceived as much friendlier toward the Islamists. This stance enhanced the ideological coherence of Ettakatol’s base.

Yet internal divisions still emerged within the party. Before the elections, a “reformist wing” surfaced that accused Ben Jaafar of making decisions unilaterally and of developing a parallel party structure consisting of himself and a close circle of allies, often wealthy Tunisians who had just returned from Europe. They were called “the group of Lac,” alluding to a rich suburb of Tunis where they allegedly met regularly to discuss strategic party priorities. To add to the reformists’ frustration, Ben Jaafar did not adopt the party program that had been prepared by his militants in its entirety but instead decided at the last minute to adopt many of the principles of the platform of the French Social Democratic Party.

Although most of Ettakatol’s Constituent Assembly deputies did not actively support the revolutionary wing, they too expressed frustration over Ben Jaafar’s tendency to make decisions primarily through a trusted circle of confidants. In particular, they blamed Ben Jaafar for not having consulted them when deciding to form a coalition with Ennahda. Most deputies were not opposed to the coalition in principle, but they deeply resented the conditions under which it took shape.

Ben Jaafar initially managed to control internal divisions by reassuring party members that their plight would be addressed after the elections. But once he was appointed head of the Constituent Assembly, there was little time and will to discuss internal party frictions. Eventually, six deputies opted to leave the party. According to one of those who resigned, “Ennahda needed Ettakatol to present a credible multiparty government, and Ben Jaafar needed Ennahda to become president of the Constituent Assembly. Everything else was of secondary importance.”

Still, in comparison with the CPR, Ettakatol managed to remain more united and critical of the Ennahda party through a better-defined ideological platform that has never stopped defending the notion of laïcité, or secularism. It was, therefore, the only party of the Troika that still earned some support among the secular political opposition, which strongly opposed the Islamist-led government.

Opposition Fragmentation Persists

In addition to the institutional fragility that had resulted from decades of authoritarian politics, Tunisia’s opposition was from the very beginning weakened by internal divisions. In many ways, these conflicts reflect the challenges experienced by the CPR and Ettakatol in government, although internal polarization was even more volatile among secular parties in the opposition.

Tunisia’s opposition was from the very beginning weakened by internal divisions.

During the Troika period, Tunisia’s opposition consisted in total of 21 parties, of which fifteen had three representatives or fewer in the Constituent Assembly. Significantly, a split within the PDP, which was the assembly’s biggest opposition party, led to the creation of the Democratic Alliance under the leadership of Mohamed Hamdi. The new party, which also included members of the Party of Development and independents, disapproved of the PDP’s reliance on anti-Islamism rather than on an effective party platform to attract voters. It also rejected the so-called cult of personality surrounding the PDP’s leader, Chebbi, and the party’s use of strategies centered on Chebbi’s presidential ambitions. This reliance on one charismatic leader is a trend very characteristic of Tunisia’s established secular parties, and it helps explain why many of them are struggling to open themselves up to new political faces.

In addition to this fragmentation, Constituent Assembly deputies from the opposition had significantly higher absence rates than deputies from the ruling coalition. For example, at the close of 2013, voter participation in the assembly’s opposition democratic bloc was 40 percent, as compared to participation from Ennahda (82 percent), the CPR (59 percent), and Ettakatol (47 percent). Those deputies belonging to no bloc voted on average 44 percent of the time.⁸ Various explanations have been proposed for the higher absence rate among the political opposition, including the fact that Tunisia’s secular parties have a reputation of being less disciplined and organized than the Islamists.

Opposition weakness was reinforced by a sometimes-limited understanding of what an opposition is supposed to do and what means it has with which to influence politics. “During Ben Ali, our understanding of opposition politics was centered on the idea of defeating the regime,” explained a leader of the Democratic Alliance. “The opposition has little experience and knowledge of how it can influence politics through dialogue [or] initiatives to compromise and to pressure the government. We should have been more active from the start so that Ennahda could not have taken all ministries,” he asserted.

Instead, however, most parties eventually fell back on the old rhetoric of defeating the government through a united front, considering this the only way to topple a regime they viewed as too dominant and incapable of providing a solution to mounting economic and security challenges. Secular parties made various attempts to work together to gain leverage over the Troika, and this confrontational approach eventually succeeded in forcing the government’s resignation. But it did little to prepare secular opposition parties to lead Tunisia, not least because Ennahda remains a key player in politics.

Temporary Secular Unity Against the Islamists

The assassination of opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi in July 2013, the second political assassination in the wake of the revolution, created momentum capable of overcoming divergences between major secular parties, which realized that unification was necessary to accomplish the goal they all shared: forcing the Islamists out of power.

Although this broad unity is unlikely to be sustainable due to competition between secular parties, it has had success in the short term. The Troika’s resignation in January 2014 was a vivid illustration of the actual leverage secular parties hold when they act as a unit. “It was just like back in the 2000s, when we created the October 18 [Movement],” explained a left-wing militant. “We realized that we had to unite under a National Salvation Front and leave our ideological differences behind in order to confront the regime. The only difference is that we are now more powerful than under Ben Ali.”

Early Unification Attempts

Even before Brahmi’s assassination, attempts had been made to increase unity among secularists in order to counterbalance the Ennahda government. Among the most significant of these is a movement founded by former interim prime minister Beji Caid Essebsi called Nidaa Tounes (“Call for Tunisia”), which was formally licensed as a political party on July 6, 2012.

Nidaa Tounes quickly rose in prominence, becoming Tunisia’s biggest secular party. Although estimates vary, reliable polls conducted in February 2014 place its support base at about 20 percent of the population,⁹ as compared to 14 percent for Ennahda.¹⁰ What drew Tunisians to Nidaa Tounes was its promise to unite all secular parties under Essebsi, who is a well-respected leadership figure for many secularists. Its supporters view Nidaa Tounes as the only hope for bringing together the secularists to counterbalance the voice of the Islamists, given that all elected parties in parliament have failed to do so.

Such broad unity is, however, unlikely. Not all secular parties supported Essebsi’s call, in particular because Nidaa Tounes also integrated people who had worked for Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party. Significantly, Tunisia’s Far Left, which had suffered fierce repression under the former regime, quickly launched a counter-initiative through the creation of the Popular Front on October 7, 2012. The front brings together twelve political parties, mostly embracing communist and Arab nationalist ideologies, under the leadership of Hamma Hammami. Recent polls place the support base of the Popular Front at around 4 percent, the second highest of any secular party.¹¹

Other initiatives attempted to unite and regroup the political opposition, but they remained limited. Their lack of success was partially because of the diverse ideological landscape of secular politics, which includes contrasting visions and political strategies, in particular vis-à-vis the Islamists. It was also in part due to persistent leadership frictions between parties with similar ideologies. In April 2012, three secular parties—the PDP, the center-right Afek Tounes party, and the leftist Joumhouri (Republican) Party—merged into a new entity that took the name of its smallest component, the Joumhouri Party. But both Afek Tounes and the Joumhouri Party eventually left the new party under accusations that the PDP’s Chebbi dominated its politics, which focused on his presidential ambitions—that is, essentially the same reasons for which the Democratic Alliance had already split from the PDP.

In addition, the Ettajdid movement and several other parties of the Democratic Modernist Pole, a small electoral alliance that won five seats in the Constituent Assembly, merged into the Social Democratic Path, or al-Massar. The new Joumhouri Party and al-Massar, along with two smaller parties not represented in the Constituent Assembly, decided in February 2013 to join Nidaa Tounes in a coalition called the Union for Tunisia, hoping to enhance their profile through an alliance with Tunisia’s biggest opposition force. The Joumhouri Party has since left the coalition.

The National Salvation Front

While early unification attempts were clearly limited, these various secular parties came together on July 26, 2013, one day after Brahmi’s assassination, to create the NSF. The coalition was dominated by the Popular Front and Nidaa Tounes, but it also included other voices, such as Ettakatol’s reformist current, the Tunisian Anti-Torture Organization, and the Tunisian Union of Unemployed Graduates. In an official statement published upon its founding, the NSF attributed “the responsibility for the increase in violence and organized political crime to the Troika and in particular to the Ennahda movement.”¹² It also demanded the fall of the government as well as the dissolution of Tunisia’s elected Constituent Assembly.

Having enthusiastically followed the removal of Egyptian President Morsi earlier that month, many opposition parties initially felt that Ennahda’s fall was imminent. “The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has shown that political Islam is outmoded,” explained a founding member of Nidaa Tounes in September 2013. “All of the Muslim Brotherhood’s regional branches, including Ennahda, will now close automatically,” he maintained.

The NSF called for the formation of what it called “a new government of national salvation” that would be charged with finishing the constitution, launching urgent economic and security measures to steer Tunisia out of crisis, and preparing the next elections. It also adopted strongly anti-Islamist rhetoric, demanding the “neutralization” of Tunisia’s administration, which it maintained had been “infiltrated” by Islamists.

Although the NSF called for the dissolution of both the government and the Constituent Assembly, many secular Tunisians only supported the resignation of the Troika, not the assembly. Regular protests in front of the Constituent Assembly calli