The InterDependent

Part 3 in a 3-part series on the elections in Tunisia.
Part 1: The Unlikely Soundtrack to a Revolution in the Birthplace of the Arab Spring
Part 2: Tunisia's Women Demand Equal Rights

TUNIS--In the coming weeks, politicians in Tunisia’s newly elected Constituent Assembly will start circulating drafts of a new Constitution to guide their country. The leading party in the assembly, al-Nahda, says that it knows of 12 such proposals, already written by various political parties. Debate will certainly open more than just a dozen differences in opinion. After all, at stake will be the architecture of the new democratic state that Tunisians have fought for over the last year.

This is only the official debate, however; the conversation about how to shape the new Tunisia started long ago—on March 3, the day that the country’s transition government announced the new assembly’s creation. Since then, Tunisia’s identity has dominated online chats, Facebook walls, and twitter feeds. Of course, coffee shop conversation delves into the matter too, particularly among middle aged and older generations.

But it’s online where the debate truly ignites—and where politics will have to be conducted in the coming years. Tunisia ushered in a springtime of Arab Revolutions broadcast through social media and hailed as a new breed of activism. What has surprised people since then, however, is just how active that online community has remained, long after the government of the ousted President Zine El-Abidine fell. Everyone from government ministries to political parties is having to adapt.

“If you look at our Facebook pages, [politics] is the only thing we talk about,” says Iman Issawi, a young voter whose friend Minyar Naouch nods in reply. Perched on bench overlooking the sea, their calm seems to conceal the lives they lead online. It lights up their eyes just to mention.

There are no shortages of examples for how Tunisia is redefining the way its relatively elderly leaders conduct politics as usual. With the Constitution looming, Mohammed Souabni, a 30-year-old from the city of Bizerte who had trained in telecommunications, decided to channel the online discussion he saw into something concrete. Under the umbrella of the organization he helped found, the Association for Participative Technology, he built an online terminal for Constitutional debate: http://www.tunisie-constitution.org. “This site contains the ancient constitution of the Republic of Tunisia,” the portal explains. “You can vote and give your opinion on each item.” Votes of thumbs up and thumbs down are visibly displayed under each article; comments create a space for debate.

By July, the results were already coming in. Speaking at a UN Development Program conference in the capital of Tunis, he could report that his users actually preferred to keep some things as they were—clauses about the country’s republican, Islamic identity, for example, as well as questions of human rights that were clearly laid out—if often ignored—in the country’s previous charter. Souabni promised to release his statistics monthly—a sort of opinion poll of the young and internet-savvy generation.

The campaign season for the Constituent Assembly also opened up avenues for virtual politicking. Tunisia’s electoral commission set strict rules for how candidates could—and couldn’t—reach out to voters. To level the playing field, they banned radio and television ads and prohibited campaign posters. Where they didn’t regulate, however, was in the virtual realm.

Just days before the election, Radwan Masmoudi, an independent candidate for office and founder of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, with offices in Washington and Tunis, visited the graphic designer nearby his office to take a last look at flyers to hand out during his last tour to meet voters. But he was more concerned about the Facebook ads he had placed. If you were Tunisian and you were on Facebook, he said only half-jokingly, you had probably seen his electoral list’s banners. Bigger parties were also tuned into this opportunity. Events, transcripts, and videos adorned Al-Nahda’s Facebook page; the party’s activities were far easier to locate there than on its official homepage.

International organizations have also caught on to the online shift of politicking. When the United Nations wanted to help encourage young Tunisians to go to the polls, it looked to technology for answers. Specifically, it turned to Twitter and an online game called DemocraTweet. Users answered questions about democracy, transparency, and a free vote; the winners will be flown to New York to meet with the UN Secretary General.

“We had to try and find new ways [to work] because of being confronted with a highly internet literate population,” recalls Philippa Neave, elections outreach advisor at the UN Development Program. “[There are] 3.2 million internet users in this country, which in a country of 10 million is huge.”

At times, the debate has gotten messy—as all politics sometimes does. Rival political pages were hacked at times, and more alarmingly, in August, the country’s electoral commission website was also sabotaged. “Was it a bad joke, or a political act?” asked local press. (The site was up again in a matter of hours.)

In the coming weeks and months, how the country’s politicians will certainly be judged on their management of delicate talks to produce a new Constitution. They might also, however, but judged on their ability to navigate democracy 2.0. During the revolution, it was social media, says Christopher Alexander, author of Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb, “that began to create a national sense of drama and transcended long standing regional and class divides.” Done right, perhaps it will be online where this country unites once again.