Winning Tunisian party calls for calm

THE leader of the moderate Islamist party that won Tunisia’s first free elections has called for calm after protests erupted in the town where the country’s revolution began.

Authorities called a curfew in the town of Sidi Bouzid, where supporters of a local candidate rioted on Friday night after he was docked seats for campaigning violations.

It was in Sidi Bouzid that a vegetable seller set himself ablaze in a protest that sparked nationwide protests and eventually led to uprisings across the Arab world.

“We call for calm among the inhabitants of Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution which must be at the forefront of preserving the public good,” said Rachid Ghannouchi, founder of the Ennahda, or Renaissance, party which took 90 of the assembly’s 217 seats.

The assembly will appoint a transitional government and write the new constitution.

The local Ennahda bureau was among buildings burned in the unrest. Police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of up to 3,000 people on Thursday night and the army fired warning shots. People burned tires, pillaged stores and torched a National Guard post and a state training centre.

Authorities imposed a nighttime curfew on Friday.

The protests were linked to the party coming fourth in the voting – the Areedha Chaabiya, or Popular Petition, party.

Its leader, Hachemi Hamdi, of Sidi Bouzid, said he was withdrawing the 19 seats his party won after the electoral commission invalidated six of them. Hamdi, owner of the Mustaqila satellite television channel based in London, had broadcast promises to give Tunisians free health care, new factories and thousands of jobs.