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Free-market anti-Islamist group wins most seats in Tunisia

Nida Tunis tops polls

Official figures from the election commission revealed today that the two main parties following parliamentary polls were the Nida Tunis (Tunis Calls) party, with 85 seats, and the moderate Islamist Ennahda party with 69.

Nida Tunis, running on an explicitly anti-Islamist platform, has won the right to name a prime minister and lead a coalition government.

It is free-market in nature and had close links to the dictatorship that was overthrown in mass protests in 2011.

Ennahda, which had previously dominated parliament, lost 23 seats. But it urged supporters to celebrate that free and fair elections had been held without bloodshed.

Nida Tunis is led by Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran politician who previously served as foreign minister in the 1980s and parliamentary speaker in the early 1990s under president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The party said a coalition with Ennahda would be "against its nature."

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