TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisians turned out in force for their country’s first truly free elections Sunday, voting that is expected to favor a longbanned Islamist party and is seen as a bellwether for prodemocracy movements across the Arab world.
With soldiers keeping order, no violence was reported near the end of the voting, though authorities noted minor scattered violations. Thousands of observers monitored Tunisia’s first elections since an uprising overthrew the longtime leader and set off anti-government revolts around the Middle East.
Voters — women with headscarves and without, former political prisoners, young people whose Facebook posts helped fuel the revolution in the North African country — are electing a 217-seat assembly that will appoint a new government and then write a new constitution.
“Tunisians showed the world how to make a peaceful revolution without icons, without ideology, and now we are going to show the world how we can build a real democracy,” Marcel Marzouki, founder of a liberal political party and former dissident exile, said as he waited in a long line outside a polling place in the coastal town of Sousse. “This will have a real impact in places like Libya and Egypt and Syria, after the fall of its regime. The whole Arab world is watching.”
Kamel Jendoubi, head of the electoral commission, said turnout was “over 60 percent and close to 70 percent” by 4 p.m. Tunisia time Sunday, three hours before the polls close. That was above expectations.
He told reporters there was no violence, but some “soft” intimidation of voters, such as demonstrations and people campaigning on voting day, which is against the rules.
Many were sure their votes would change Tunisia for the better, regardless of who won.
One woman celebrated a vote she cast at random. Fatima Toumi, 52, an illiterate housewife, said, beaming with pride, that she had done her civic duty but did not know which party’s box she had checked. “Whatever I pick doesn’t matter,” she said. “I hope it will improve the situation of Tunisia’s youth.”
Results might not come until today or Tuesday. The party expected to come out on top is the moderate Islamic movement Ennahda.
Tunisians overthrew the 23-year presidency of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14 after a month-long uprising stirred by anger at unemployment, corruption and repression.
The uprising began when fruit ve ndor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the impoverished town of Sidi Bouzid in an act of protest at his lack of opportunity and the disrespect of the police.
On Sunday, his mother, Manoubia Bouazizi, 53, called the elections “a moment of victory for my son, who died defending dignity and liberty.”
The unexpected revolution in the quiet Mediterranean country set off a series of similar uprisings against entrenched leaders, an event now being called the Arab Spring.
Noting the revolts in the rest of the Arab world that were set off by her son’s immolation, Bouazizi said in an interview with Reuters, “He is no longer the son of Tunisia, he is the son of the whole world.”
In the affluent Tunis suburb of al-Aouina, 18-year-old language student and former protester Zeinab Souayah said, “I’m going to grow up and think back on these days and tell my children about them.”
The ballot is an extra-large piece of paper bearing the names and symbols of the parties fielding a candidate in each district. The symbols are meant to aid the illiterate, estimated at about 25 percent of the population in a country with one of the most educated populations in the region.
Tunisia is using a proportional representation, or “list,” system that allocates seats to candidates on the basis of votes for their party roster, so that the names listed first have the best chance of winning seats. Voting rules required each party to alternate men and women on its roster of candidates. But Tunisian newspapers reported Sunday that the parties had put women at the top of fewer than one in 10 district lists.
Voters in each of the country’s 33 districts, six of which are abroad, have a choice of between roughly 40 and 80 electoral lists.
It’s a cacophony of choice in a country effectively under one-party rule since independence from France in 1956, and where the now-popular Islamist party Ennahda was long banned.
Ennahda supporters were divided over how much regulation of personal morality the party should seek to impose. They said they hoped that Muslims might be free to adopt Islamic dress and pray without persecution, but that women would be able to reject the Islamic veil and that Tunisians could choose to buy alcohol.
Others complained that Tunisia’s liberal parties supported its current decriminalization of prostitution or said they expected Ennahda to crack down on profanity or blasphemy in the popular culture.
There are 7.5 million potential voters, though only 4.4 million of them, or just under 60 percent, are actually registered. People can vote with their identity cards but only at certain stations, which caused some confusion.
In the 10 months since the uprising, Tunisia’s economy and unemployment, part of the reason for the revolution in the first place, have only become worse as tourists and foreign investors have stayed away.
Information for this article was contributed from Tunis, Tunisia by Paul Schemm and Bouazza Ben Bouazza of The Associated Press; and by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/24/2011