Tunisia: Islamist Named PM, Leftists Named President, Speaker

Tunisia's election winners on Friday reached a power-sharing agreement under which an Islamist will be named premier and two leftists will be named president and speaker of the constitutional assembly, media reports said.

The Islamist Ennahda party nominated its deputy leader Hamadi Jebali to lead the government, while Moncef Marzouki, head of the center-left Congress for the Republic, will be named Tunisia’s president, and Mustapha Ben Jaafar, head of the left-wing Ettakatol, will be named speaker of the constitutional assembly.

Ennahda has won 89 of the 217 seats in Tunisia's new constituent assembly, according to definitive official results released Monday.

The runners up in the first free elections in the north African country were the Congress for the Republic (CPR; 29 seats) and the Popular Petition (26 seats).

The turnout was 54.1 percent, according to the electoral commission, which specified that about four million of the 7.6 million registered voters cast their ballots in the election on October 23.

The left-wing Ettakatol won 20 seats, the Progressive Democratic Party took 16 and the Democratic Modernist Pole took five.

Some of the remaining seats went to very small parties, including the Communists who won three, while 16 seats went to candidates who stood on independent lists.

The new constituent assembly will meet for the first time on November 22 in the premises of the old parliament building in Tunis.

The body's task is to draw up a new constitution, after the ouster last January 14 of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled Tunisia for 23 years.

The assembly will also form a new executive branch of power and can legislate until general elections are held.

Interim President Fouad Mebazaa and the provisional government led by Beji Caïd Essebsi, formed a month and a half after the fall of Ben Ali, will remain in charge until a new team is ready to take over.