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Tunis – Souad Abderrahim, head of the list of the Islamist party Ennahdha during the recent municipal elections, was elected Tuesday mayor of Tunis, a first for a woman.
" I offer this victory to all the women of my country, to all the youth and to Tunisia ", launched, visibly moved, the new 53-year-old man, who until then was manager of a pharmaceutical company.
Ms. Abderrahim, a member of Ennahdha's political bureau but who defines herself as independent, was elected by the new councilors, with 26 votes to 22 for her main opponent, Kamel Idir. Mr. Idir, former local leader under the regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was the head of the Nidaa Tounes party, founded by current president Beji Caid Essebsi.
Souad Abderrahim was elected in a second round boycotted by some elected officials from the left and center, refusing to vote for one or other of the two hegemonic parties, Ennahdha and Nidaa.
Islamist-inspired party and current ally of Nidaa Tounes at the national level, Ennahdha had led in many localities during the May 6 municipal elections, the first since the revolution of 2011.
In Sfax, second city of the country and big economic center, a close friend of Ennahdha was also elected mayor at the end of June.
In the capital, Ennahdha came in first but without an absolute majority, with 21 seats out of 60, in a vote marked by a strong abstention fueled by persistent economic difficulties and mistrust of the elites.
Across the country, the independent lists won the most seats, with 2,367 elected in the 350 municipalities, or 32.9%.
– " Sheikh of the Medina " –
Appreciated from the Ennahdha base, Ms. Abderrahim is a long-time road companion of the party, but the movement was accused during the campaign to use it to modernize its image.
During her university years, she was a member of the Ennahdha bloc at the Constituent Assembly from 2011 to 2014, where she had earned a reputation as a moralizer, before disappearing almost from the political landscape, to the municipal level. .
The new mayor of Tunis rejects the label " Islamist ", like the party itself, which remains anxious not to turn its opponents and has transformed itself half 2016 in part " civil with Islamic reference ", acting a separation between political and religious. He is now defined as " Muslim Democrat ".
" The first case will be the improvement of the aesthetics of Tunis ," Abderrahim told AFP.
The Tunisian capital is particularly confronted with a problem of waste management, which got worse after 2011.
These elections also mark the beginning of decentralization, a crucial project in a country where the municipalities were – little autonomous, dependent on a central administration often clientelist.
Since the revolution that ousted Ben Ali in 2011, they were administered by special delegations, often with poor management.
Mrs. Abderrahim, who will have to leave her company under the law, becomes the first " sheikh of the medina ", the traditional masculine title given to the mayor of the capital because it occupies a particular function during certain religious holidays.
Like her, many women have come to power under a very strict parity law.
According to the Independent Electoral Body (Isie), 47% of the elected representatives are women, of which 573 are headed by lists (29.5% of the total).
Municipal councils are still forming, but the proportion of women mayors in Tunisia could be relatively high, observers said.
The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Maghreb reported on Tuesday morning 52 women elected mayors out of a total of 269 municipalities where the election has already taken place.
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