Tunisia Votes

Tunisians went to the polls yesterday:

Voting lines wrapped around street corners on Sunday and parents brought children to witness the milestone, the first truly free vote in Tunisia’s history and the first election of the Arab Spring, which began in this small North African nation and sent shock waves through the region.

There were few reports of fraud or violence, and election officials said turnout was higher than expected, with an estimated 7 million of 10.4 million people eligible to vote. Tunisian officials said they would probably release preliminary results Monday or Tuesday.

For Tunisians, it was an opportunity to have their say in the political rebirth of their country after the ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January. But the vote was also closely watched in other Arab countries that are stepping toward democracy after decades of dictatorial rule. Egypt is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections in a month, the first since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, and, with the declaration of the formal end of the regime of Moammar Gaddafi, Libyans are expected to go to the polls in eight months.

“Whatever the outcome is, it is our decision, it is not imposed on us,” said Ismail Trabelsi, 42, an environmental engineer who went to vote in the middle-class neighborhood of al-Aouina at 7 a.m. He waited in line for more than an hour to cast his ballot in a school, one of more than 4,000 polling stations. “We’ve waited 55 years for this moment,” he said.

As I joked on Twitter earlier, it’s weird that the story, nor any of the others I’ve read on this weekend’s elections, doesn’t mention any Tunisians thanking George W. Bush for invading Iraq. Given the frequency with which neocons have been demanding credit for the Arab Awakening, you’d think we might have heard something…

But the serious point is that it makes an enormous difference that these elections are not happening under the auspices of a foreign military occupation. This is something the people of Tunisia have done for themselves, and they deserve to be immensely proud of that.