Tunisia Set for First Ever Election on Sunday

Less than a year after booting Ben Ali from office, Tunisians head to the ballot box on Sunday for their first truly democratic election.

Tunisia might have been overlooked in recent months because of the more mainstream revolutions in Egypt, Syria, and Libya, but it's really the Velvet Underground of the Arab Spring. That's where things started with a young fruit vendor setting himself on fire to protest the ruling regime's oppression last December, and now Tunisia is set to hold its own democratic elections this Sunday. It's the first ever democratic election held in the North African nation, and comes 10 months after its dictator, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country amid a popular uprising. Among the leading parties is al-Nahda, an Islamist party that says it's committed to upholding democracy in the vein of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, but whose critics, including the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) and the Modernist Democratic Pole, say will turn the clock back on women's rights and secularity. In Canadian terms, think of it as the Liberals and NDP claiming the Conservatives have a "hidden agenda," accept that this hidden agenda could include forcing women to be accompanied by men if they're out of the house. Half of the Modernist Democratic Pole's candidates are women, and a women is the deputy leader of the PDP. Campaigning so far has gone smoothly, although Egypt's first elections, set to begin next month, could prove to be a much greater strain on the fruits of the Arab Spring.