Tunisia assembly begins voting on new constitution

Tunisian lawmakers began voting on a proposed constitution Friday, three years after a revolution that sparked the Arab Spring. Photo by Flickr user Keith Roper

Three years after protests in Tunisia sparked revolutions across the Arab World, lawmakers in the North African country began voting on their new constitution Friday.

The two-year process of drafting the constitution has been plagued with protests, violence and a difficult transition from authoritarian rule. The BBC reports that the national assembly, elected in October 2011, was expected to adopt a new constitution within a year.

Reuters' Aziz El Yaakoubi reports that a central issue in the constitutional debate surrounded Islam's role in the fledgling democracy. However, Yaakoubi wrote, "the parties have overcome their disagreements." The first clause of the proposed constitution notes that Tunisia is "a free country, independent, with sovereignty; Islam is its religion, Arabic its language and the republic its regime." Members of parliament will proceed to vote separately on the proposed constitution's 150 articles, each requiring a majority vote to pass. The entire document must also be approved by two-thirds of the 217 lawmakers by Jan. 14, the third anniversary of Tunisia's revolution. If the document fails in parliament, the citizens of Tunisia will be asked to vote on the constitution in a national referendum.

Tunisia's transition to democracy is critical in a region struggling for stability after the Arab Spring. In a PBS NewsHour report from November 2013, Monica Marks of Oxford University said, "If Tunisia can pull through these next number of years, if people can together work for compromise and have that blitzkrieg mentality, we're going to get through this no matter what, then Tunisia could become the first democracy in the Arab world, and no longer can people say Arabs aren't ready for democracy."

H/T Bridget Bowman