Tunis:The Islamist Ennahda party was officially declared winner of Tunisia’s first democratic elections following the ouster of former dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
Secular party protesters angry their fourth-placed party had been eliminated from the election set fire to the mayor’s office in Sidi Bouzid.
Ennahda’s leader Rachid Ghannouchi paid tribute to the provincial Tunisian town’s role in Tunisia’s revolution.
“We salute Sidi Bouzid and its sons who launched the spark and we hope that God will have made Mohamed Bouazizi a martyr,” said the soft-spoken Islamic scholar, who spent 22 years in exile in Britain.
“We will continue this revolution to realise its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone,” Ghannouchi told a crowd of cheering supporters.
Announcing the results, election commission members said Ennahda had won 90 seats in the 217-seat assembly, which will draft a new constitution, form an interim government and schedule new elections, probably for early 2013.
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