The leader of the moderate Islamist party that won Tunisia's first free elections called for calm Friday after protests erupted in the town where the country's revolution began.
Authorities called a curfew in the town of Sidi Bouzid,
where supporters of a local candidate rioted after he was docked seats for
campaigning violations.
It was in Sidi Bouzid where a vegetable seller set
himself ablaze in a protest that sparked nationwide protests and eventually led
to uprisings across the Arab world.
"We call for calm among the inhabitants of Sidi
Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution which must be at the forefront of
preserving the public good," said Rachid Ghannouchi, founder of the
Ennahda, or Renaissance, party which took 90 of the assembly's 217 seats.
The assembly will be tasked with appointing a
transitional government and writing the new constitution.
The local Ennahda bureau was among buildings burned in
the unrest. Police lobbed tear gas to disperse a crowd of up to 3,000 people on
Thursday night and the army fired warning shots, according to town resident
Mourad Barhoumi. Residents burned tires, pillaged some stores and torched a
National Guard post and a state training center, he said.
Authorities on Friday imposed a nighttime curfew,
Interior Ministry spokesman Hichem Meddeb said.
The protests were linked to the party coming in fourth in
the voting – the Areedha Chaabiya, or Popular Petition party. Its leader,
Hachemi Hamdi, of Sidi Bouzid, announced on national television that he was
withdrawing the 19 seats his party won after the electoral commission
invalidated six of its seats.
Hamdi, owner of the Mustaqila satellite television
channel based in London, had broadcast promises to give Tunisians free health
care, new factories and thousands of jobs.
Electoral officials ultimately invalidated five lists
tarnished by financing violations and one led by a former member of the ruling
party – now banned.
Ghannouchi's long-banned Ennahda party has promised to
create a broad-based coalition as it works to form a government to replace
interim leaders who have run Tunisia since ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben
Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14, chased away after a month of protests.
Potential partners are the Congress for the Republic
party, founded in 2001 and which came in second place with 30 seats, and the
third-placed Ettakatol party, which won 21 seats.
Congress for the Republic is headed by noted human rights
activist Moncef Marzouki, a doctor who had lived in exile in Paris. Ettakatol,
or the Democratic Forum for Labor and Freedoms, is led by Mustapha Ben Jaafar,
also a doctor.
Ghannouchi, who spent more than two decades in exile in
London, reiterated reassurances that his party would not impinge on women's
rights in this Muslim Arab country.
"The program aims to strengthen the role of women,
on the social as well as political level," he said.
Some Tunisians have feared a victory for the Islamist
Ennahda might mean a rolling back of some of the country's more secular
traditions.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland
congratulated Tunisia on its successful elections and said the U.S. would judge
Tunisia's parties by their respect for core democratic principles: freedom of
speech, expression and media, and tolerance of differing views.
Britain's Middle East Minister Alistair Burt, meanwhile,
expressed hope that the positive atmosphere in the run-up to elections would be
replicated in the process of forming a coalition government and writing the new
constitution.
"It is important that they fulfill the aspirations
of the Tunisian people by respecting the principles of democracy, pluralism,
rule of law and human rights," he said.