The Republique area of downtown Tunis is filled with the markers of a democracy in the making. Banners for the Modernist Democratic Pole, a coalition of leftist parties, compete for the attention of passersby with a honking parade of cars flying flags of the Islamist Ennahda party. Nearly everyone in Tunisia’s busy capital says they plan on voting in the first real democratic election in the country’s history to be held on Sunday. And if the populace is unused to voting (it rarely participated in the sham democracy of ousted President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali), it is getting a lot of help. For example, the entire wall of an apartment building above the Republique train tracks is devoted to showing how it’s done. “I put the paper in the ballot box,” reads step 10 on the illustrated chart.
But politics is complicated. There are more than 100 parties vying for spots in the assembly that will write the country’s new constitution. Many of them are unknown to voters, having sprouted in the democratic free-for-all that followed the revolution. “I have my ID card and I’m going to vote. I’ve been waiting for it my whole life,” says Rizqi Habib, a
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