TUNIS: Tunisia’s biggest secular party said Wednesday it had started coalition talks with the Islamist Ennahda which leads the vote count in historic polls, insisting the frontrunner is neither the devil nor the Taliban.
"No, no, no it is not the devil and we do not make pacts with the devil," Congress for the Republic leader Moncef Marzouki told reporters in Tunis.
"One must not take them for the Taliban of Tunisia. It is a moderate part of Islam."
On the sidelines of a press conference, Marzouki underlined the protection of civil liberties and gender equality as non-negotiatable.
"We are able … to defend these ideas without an ideological war with the Islamist or conservative part of society.
"We are capable of negotiating with them, to ensure that these ideals are maintained in Tunisia without an ideological civil war, without a battle between the modernist pole and the Islamist pole," Marzouki said.
Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda party vowed to form a new government within a month Wednesday as early results gave it a commanding lead in the Arab Spring’s first free election, but not an outright majority.
Marzouki said the CPR expected to capture about 30 seats on a new 217-member assembly that will rewrite the constitution, appoint a caretaker government and prepare for fresh elections.
"We have said to the Islamists that we are attached to our Arab-Muslim identity, but that we refuse the exploitation of religion as a tool of dictatorship," he stressed.
Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi in a radio interview Wednesday insisted on the country’s Arabic identity and blamed its Franco-Arabic character on "language pollution."
The CPR, a leftist, nationalist party, has promised a social approach in its election program: stricter government control of the banks, redistribution of wealth, the creation of agricultural cooperatives and lower VAT.
"We want a government of national unity in which we will play an important role," said Marzouki.
The CPR, banned under the dictatorship of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was accused by fellow liberal parties of seeking "a pact with the devil" for pre-poll negotiations with Ennahda that failed to yield a firm pact.
