MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, from Oakland to Atlanta, police forces around the country began arresting Occupy Wall Street demonstrators this week. We'll explore the issue of protestor rights. But first, Tunisia's democratic experiment. In January, protestors in Tunisia took to the streets and helped kick start the Arab Spring. This week, Tunisian voters took the ballot box in the first election since those uprisings began.

MR. KOJO NNAMDINinety percent of registered voters cast a ballot. Here in Washington, D.C., expats lined up at the Tunisian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. The results show an Islamist party as the big winner, followed by two smaller secular parties. But this election had significance beyond winners and losers. International observers said it was remarkably free and fair and the main parties are talking about governing together for the good of the country.

MR. KOJO NNAMDISo, can this be -- is this a template for change across the region? Joining us in studio to discuss this is Noureddine Jebnoun. He's a professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Noureddine Jebnoun, thank you for joining us.

MR. NOUREDDINE JEBNOUNThank you for having me.

NNAMDIAlso with us in studio is our own Sabri Ben-Achour. He is a reporter with the WAMU 88.5 News. Sabri worked as a reporter from Tunisia this January. He's also a Tunisian citizen. Sabri, thank you for joining us.

MR. SABRI BEN-ACHOURSure thing.

NNAMDINoureddine, I'll start with you. Tunisia is, in many ways, a unique country. It has a small, relatively homogenous population. It has a large well-educated middle class. Still, after more than two decades of rule by President Ben Ali, many observers were worried that these elections were coming too soon. What do you see as most significant about how it was conducted and about the results?

JEBNOUNYeah. As you pointed out, Tunisia is the most homogenous country in the region. There is no problem of minorities and we have, like, a strong middle class. And more than two million of youth who are able to use Internet, use the so-called digital power in comparison to Algeria, where we have less than half of million of people able to use Internet. I think these elections alone will not institutionalize democracy much less solve the country's myriad of problems.

JEBNOUNBut I think this election has provided million of Tunisians with the first opportunity to vote fairly in a generally competitive elections following more than 50 years of autocratic and authoritarian regime, both under Bourguiba and Ben Ali. Those elections turned out to vote and significant numbers showing great enthusiasm and determination of the population to have more representative government, a government which should be more accountable, at least at the constitutional level. People are asking and looking for more constitutional accountability, transparency, rule of law, independence of the judiciary court. This is what Tunisian people are looking for.

NNAMDIDo you see this as having any particular relevance for Egypt, which has elections scheduled for next month?

JEBNOUNI think the situation in Egypt is more complex than in Tunisia. The first element we have, unlike Egypt, the Tunisian military remains in the barracks. In Egypt, the military is still playing a very important role. The military in Egypt are the backbone of the regime. Again, the Muslim Brotherhood, as an organization in Egypt, is a very, I will say, has -- within the organization we have, like, a conflict of generation and still using this kind of slogan-like Islam in the solution. We didn't see any genuine, I will say, revision of the thought of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as we saw in Tunisia with the Ennahda.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is the number you can call, if you'd like to conversation. We're talking about the recently concluded elections in Tunisia. 800-433-8850. You can also send email to kojo@wamu.org or tweet @kojoshow or go to our website, kojoshow.org, ask a question or make a comment there. Sabri, Washington is a global city and events in places like Tunisia often play out in interesting ways in this town. You have Tunisian citizenship. You went to vote at the embassy on Sunday. Tell us a little bit about your experience.

BEN-ACHOURWell, you know, I got there and there was a lot of big smiles. The voting was a little different from how I think it's done here. You know, you go through lines, mark up paper behind a curtain and putting a big Tupperware box in the middle and get your finger dipped in blue ink, which actually washed off surprisingly quickly.

NNAMDII heard it took days to wash it off.

BEN-ACHOURNo, it took about 20 minutes.

NNAMDIOkay.

BEN-ACHOURYeah. I mean, one of the things about the election that I have heard from people there, as it was a huge party, a festive atmosphere. People waited in line for five hours. You know, they said there aren't even lines that long, you know, in the worst of times for bread or for milk. So it was a really positive atmosphere that underlies the high expectations that people have, which I think is a concern for (unintelligible).

NNAMDIThis is something people want to do. Joining us by telephone from Tripoli is David Kirkpatrick. He is a reporter with the New York Times. David Kirkpatrick, thank you for joining us.

MR. DAVID KIRKPATRICKIt's a pleasure.

NNAMDIDavid, you covered the voting in Tunisia and the aftermath. Tell us what the mood was like or what it was like and still is like there.

KIRKPATRICKIt was very exciting. It was really almost magical in a lot of ways. You know, it's been an anxious time over the last 10 months in Tunisia. There's been a lot of fears that the revolution, you know, it happened so quickly. People just took to the street and then suddenly the dictator was gone almost all of sudden. And people didn't quite feel they had it under their control. There's a lot of worries that it was going to slip away and people going back to the street, and fears of counter revolutions and sabotage.

KIRKPATRICKAnd then, suddenly, the morning of the election, the crowd were enormous and everybody was waiting in line peacefully. And everybody I talked to was absolutely sure that for the first time in their lives their votes were going to be counted freely and fairly and determine their country's future. And their hopes were really inspiring. People seem to believe that whoever won, just the act of voting itself was going to change their country for the better.

KIRKPATRICKThe more articulate of them said, well, that's because from now on they'll be accountable. People will be responsive to us because they know we're watching. They'll have to run for election again. But I met one woman who was illiterate and said she showed me her blue ink and she was all fired up about casting her vote and she had no idea who she voted for. She said, it doesn't really matter, I'm sure it's going to change Tunisia and help out the youth. And I just thought it was sort of wonderful.

NNAMDIYou know, Sabri, in a sense, the entire Arab Spring started last December with an incredible act of political defiance by Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor who set himself on fire in an act of protest against the inhumane treatment he was receiving at the hands of police and others in the government of longtime dictator Ben Ali. Talk a little bit about your own observations about pre-Bouazizi conversations in Tunisia and post-Bouazizi conversations in Tunisia.

BEN-ACHOURWell, to the extent that there were preexisting conversations, they were very private and behind closed doors. I mean, I remember getting my haircut one time and the president came on. This was in a village near Tunis. And the president came on and the hairdresser immediately flipped the station off. And, I mean, turned it off. And I was like, oh, don't you want to, you know, don't you want to hear the president? And he just, like, looked at me sideways and just said nothing and just kept cutting my hair. You know, whereas afterwards, I mean, it's as if everyone's sort of filter just smashed into a thousand pieces.

NNAMDIFloodgates open.

BEN-ACHOURYeah. There was, you know, my cousin was at some training. He works for a bank. He was at some training, a boring training about banking. And he said the entire thing fell apart basically and it just became this big rambling political discussion. That, you know, the cleaning lady came in. She was, like, you know, you can't silence me, I have an opinion, too. You know, she was -- it just -- everyone wanted to express themselves. It's a really positive environment.

NNAMDINoureddine, will this post-Bouazizi, as I call it, period and the election in particular have a positive or similar impact, you think, across the region?

JEBNOUNI think, first of all, at least at the local level when we talk about Tunisia. I think the power will rationalize the Islamists. For example, the Ennahda, as a movement, which was crashed under Ben Ali succeeded in, I will say, building its network on the ground by being in direct contact with, like, disenfranchised and marginalized segments from Tunisian society. What they did, they worked hard on the ground, to quote Gadhafi, I will say, "inch by inch, street by street, home by home, and alley by alley."

JEBNOUNThey were -- they had, like, a kind of, I will say, populace discourse towards the population in comparison to where the leftist or those they label themselves as secularist, who had, like, a kind of elitist discourse. This is regarding Tunisia. Now, we'll see that the country has a kind of moderate tradition. It means Tunisia is a country where extremism is not, like, conducive. Means another or other party will manage the country rather than governing the country and will manage the country based on negotiation, on compromise, on persuasion.

JEBNOUNAnd hopefully, the Tunisian experience, as the tsunami, the spring or Arab Spring started in Tunisia, hopefully the Tunisian experience will influence positively the rest of the Arab world, and especially Egypt and then hopefully Syria and Yemen. I think people, either in the West or in the region, are scrutinizing, putting this experience under radar and hopefully the outcome of this experience will be really positive for the rest of the region.

NNAMDINoureddine Jebnoun is a professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He joins us in studio to discuss democratic elections in Tunisia with Sabri Ben-Achour. He's a reporter with WAMU 88.5 News who worked as a reporter from Tunisia this January. He's also a Tunisian citizen who voted in that election this past Sunday. We're taking your calls at 800-433-8850.

NNAMDIDavid Kirkpatrick is a reporter with the New York Times. He joins us by telephone from Tripoli. David, the victors here are talking about respecting women's rights and their rivals are talking about working together to find common ground. It seems like on the surface, at least, moderation is the watch word here. Why do you think these political parties seem to be choosing only to accentuate the positive, David?

KIRKPATRICKWell, they didn't -- they didn't. That's how it looks now. But there was one liberal party, the dominant liberal party, the leading secular force in Tunisia that came out swinging. They started and finished their campaign relentlessly attacking Ennahda, which is a relatively moderate Islamist party. It has a kind of, you know, crypto theocratic force that was using religion to manipulate people. And after being relatively strong, you know, the strongest of all the liberal parties in the polls, when people finally went to vote, they sank like a stone.

KIRKPATRICKThat party collapsed. And what you saw was Tunisians voting, about half them for an Islamist party, a modern Islamist party, about half of them for more secular parties. But all of them against a kind of a culture war discourse. Those attacks really sank like a stone. And that's, you know, I think a tribute to the Tunisians but also has some lessons for people around the region.

KIRKPATRICKI mean, there's a kind of interesting Islamist on Islamist conversation going on in which Ennahda is a moderating or liberal force. And there's also a lot of consternation right now in the aftermath of these Arab Spring revolutions among liberals who are trying to say, you know, how afraid should we be of Islamists and what is our answer? You know, do we attack all Islamists as though it's all Iran, everywhere or is there is a different response?

KIRKPATRICKAnd in Tunisia, we saw that the successful liberal response was not to fight about religion whatsoever. The successful liberal parties, the ones that rose from relative obscurity to now form part of this new unity government said, you know, we respect Islam, let's talk about the practical problems, let's talk about jobs for the unemployed.

NNAMDIWell, I'm glad you brought that up because Noureddine, you can forgive us in this country if we're a bit confused because Ennahda is commonly said to be an Islamist party, but it's taking great pains to talk about human rights and women's right. Could you tell us who exactly Ennahda is, where did it come from and what are its priorities?

JEBNOUNIt was the former, like, Islamic tendency movement that emerged in the '70s. So then in the '80s, we saw a different events or I will see a clash with the regime, with the Bourguiba regime and then Ben Ali start, like, crushing this movement. But the movement start a process of revision in the '80s and '90s for example, Mr. Ghannouchi said, I am able to accept the sentence of the people, like, decide to choose the communist party to run the country.

JEBNOUNSo this is a huge ideological revolution within the movement. The Ennahda party has declared its commitment to civil state based on pluralism, human rights, gender equality, civil liberties above all democratic practice. But the problem with the electoral campaign that took place in Tunisia, the debate was polarized between the so-called secularist and Islamist. And in Tunisia, within the Islamic context, when you try to delegate the symbols of Islam, means the people, they will vote against you whatever you will try to do, whatever will try to offer to them.

JEBNOUNAnd this is what the secularists didn't understand. They tried to, like, to monopolize the discourse of modernity and modernism. They tried to monopolize the discourse on gender and women. And I think the best advocate of the issue of women must be women and not someone else who try, like, to monopolize this discourse. I think the main issue wasn't raised during this campaign which should be the constitution.

JEBNOUNBecause the constitute assembly has the main task is to draft a new constitution for the country. We didn't see and hear any debate about the constitution, whether the regime should be a parliamentarian regime, Presidential, semi-Presidential, mixed. We didn't hear anything either -- whether from the Ennahda -- either from the Ennahda or other political movement in Tunisia.

NNAMDIYou know, as I said, just in case we are confused in the United States, Sabri, because when we hear the term Islamist party, we invariably think extreme Islamist party. But you are a part of the Tunisian Diaspora and you have family in the U.S., you have family in Paris, you have family in Tunisia. How do they talk about politics in general, and about the Ennahda party in particular?

BEN-ACHOURWell, you know, I -- I'll go beyond just what my family tells me. But from people I've, you know, it was actually really interesting. When I talk to people about Ennahda, you know, I expected to hear people say, oh, you know, I'm worried about them or I don't trust them. And, you know, I didn't -- I don't hear that very often. I hear people say -- on the one hand, the secularists, which I think is a credit to the political culture in Tunisia, they'll say, you know, I don't agree with everything they say, but they have a right to say it, you know.

BEN-ACHOURAnd we are a Muslim country and we're proud of that, you know. So, you know, on the one hand you hear that, on the other hand, you do hear people say that they want -- you know, because the Islamic party was so repressed for many years, brutally. I spoke with, you know, a former leader who's in prison for 24 years, you know. And because of that repression, I think people see them as victims, in many ways, that want to sort of reassert themselves in some sort of a matter of fairness. You know, they have a right after what they've gone through.

NNAMDIBut they don't see them as vengeful necessarily.

BEN-ACHOURNo. And they don't talk in a vengeful way. You know, there's a -- the one -- this one former prisoner I talked to, he said, you know, look, I have two daughters. One wears a veil and the other doesn't. I don't care. You know, we don't want to have -- we don't want to force anything on anybody. Now, there's certainly people who are skeptical of that. I mean, just the other day, apparently there was some proclamation that said, you know, we're not against -- we're not for polygamy, but we're kind of against a law that would outlaw it.

BEN-ACHOURYou know, and so in those sorts of little side discussions or in some of the sort of far right protests against "Persepolis," you see little hints of things, but I mean, you're going to see hints of anything.

NNAMDIThose are things that will ultimately, I guess, be resolved politically, but here is Mohammad on the phone in Washington, D.C. Mohammad, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MOHAMMADHey guys. Yeah, I just want to point out, you know, Islam is not really against women. It's the most misconception. We took the Arab culture and that region culture, before Islam, of the bad treatment of women and we still carrying that and going with it. Actually, the prophet Mohammad, he's the first man on earth. If you research, you will see that he's given the right for women to own, to vote, to even go to war, you know. So it is not Islam that is against women, it is the culture of those countries that they still carry in it until today against women.

NNAMDIMohammad, thank you very much for your call. That's a sentiment that's been articulated a lot on this broadcast. But, Noureddine, the new government will have power for one year and it is tasked with writing a new constitution. What should we be looking for?

JEBNOUNYes. This is very important task. Means will be for one year, drafting a constitution for the country means drafting the new legal framework that will define and govern the relationship between the rules and the rulers and also the relationship between Tunisia and its foreign partners. This is very important. This will be a new constitution, but we should, like, take into consideration, like, the constitution is not something holy, is not something secularized, should be amended in the future to take in the consideration the dynamics within the Tunisian society. This is very important.

NNAMDISabri, you wanted to say.

BEN-ACHOURYeah, I wanted to ask, actually, Professor Jebnoun. I mean, as you mentioned, this was...

NNAMDIThis is what happens when you put a reporter on a broadcast. And we've got two of them. Go ahead, Sabri.

BEN-ACHOURWell, you know, as you mentioned, this election was supposed to be about who's going to put together a new constitution for the country and nobody talked about that.

KIRKPATRICKNo.

BEN-ACHOURDo you think this...

KIRKPATRICKYou know what, that's not quite right. I really disagree with that. This is Kirkpatrick here in Tripoli.

NNAMDIOf course.

KIRKPATRICKI heard a lot of debate within Tunisia about a parliamentary versus a Presidential system and other questions of civil liberties as well as an article of the constitution that would state that it is an Islamic country or its roots. The roots of its law are an Islamic law. So I think there was actually quite a bit of substantive discussion about the constitution.

BEN-ACHOURWell...

JEBNOUNWhere I disagree with another one. You hear some of -- many of their leaders talking about the fact, like, their goal is to reconcile Tunisian with their identity. As a Tunisian living abroad, I spent, like, 18 years of my life between Europe and the United States. I haven't any problem of identity. I haven't any crisis of identity. Tunisia is a country which is located in Africa, means we have at least four components of our identity, which is African, Arab, Berber and Muslim. And no one can or try, like, to favor one component over the other.

JEBNOUNIt means, I don't think, like, the goal of a political party is, I will say, to conceal people with their identity. The goal is to try to find, like, jobs, a real solution for the population, for the youth to deliver. You know, Mr. Erdogan -- when Erdogan travel abroad the country, he never took with him...

NNAMDIThe prime minister of Turkey.

JEBNOUN...prime minister of Turkey, he never took with him, like, in his, like, flight, like, in his plane, like, military or Shai, he takes with him, like, businessmen and he's a pragmatic. This is what people need in Tunisia. They need, like, an effective government, efficient, efficacious, able to deliver. And...

NNAMDIWhich underscores the point that you were making, Sabri.

BEN-ACHOURWell, I think that the overwhelming promises that the parties were making to people were often economic, in terms of, we're going to fix the unemployment problem, we're going to deal with this recent inflation. And I think, yes, there was broad consensus on, yes, Tunisia's going to be a Islamic state. Yes, everyone agrees they're going to have respect for civil liberties. But I mean, I didn't see promises -- I didn't see the campaign going -- addressing, first and foremost, the actual constitution to deliberations they were going to make.

NNAMDIThis is of the constitute -- got to leave David Kirkpatrick. But you are now in Tripoli, Libya. So I have to ask you, what are you covering and what are you seeing there?

KIRKPATRICKWell, I got here yesterday. I'm trying to take stock of the country in the aftermath of Gadhafi's killing last week. I mean, there's -- the countries been putting off the question of forming its own new government and beginning its political transition until now. And their task is much more difficult than it was in Tunisia. This is a country without any national institutions, that is very divided regionally as well as ideologically. And there are a lot of signs of tension between the different parts of the country which have almost evolved into city states within the country. So that's why I'm here and we'll see how that goes.

NNAMDIAnd we'll be keeping track of your reporting. David Kirkpatrick is a reporter for The New York Times. He joined us by telephone from Tripoli, Libya. David, thank you so much for joining us.

KIRKPATRICKIt's a pleasure.

NNAMDINoureddine Jebnoun is a professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Noureddine Jebnoun, thank you for joining us.

JEBNOUNThank you, Kojo, for having me. Thank you.

NNAMDISabri Ben-Achour is a reporter for WAMU 88.5 News. Sabri is also a Tunisian citizen. Sabri, thank you so much for taking time out of your terribly busy schedule. He lied cleverly to join us.

BEN-ACHOURThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIGoing to take a short break. When we come back, we'll be talking about the Occupy Wall Street protests and the response in cities around the country using Washington, D.C. as an example of the handling of protestors in the past. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.