Official results showed Ennahda won more than 41 percent of the country’s vote, securing 90 seats in the 217-member parliament. Ennahda, which was banned under the former regime led by President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, says it has modeled itself after the governing AK Party in Turkey, which is another Muslim-majority country that has remained as a secular state. Ennahda also has said it wants to form a new government within the next month.

In that same article on BBC, Ennahda said Ghannouchi told a crowd of supporters, “We will continue this revolution to realize its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous, in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone.”

Ennahda also has promised to not ban alcohol, allow tourists to wear bikinis on the beach and not to impose Islamic banking, which was a concerning problem for the secularists and investors of the country.

As an aspiring journalism, I must say there are not many days spent in a life chasing news that are as relentlessly positive as this one was — especially for a country such as Tunisia — that remind you that the right to vote is held most precious by those who have long been denied it and who are exercising it for the first time.

There was something pleasingly fresh about the campaign that went on too. Also reported on bbc.co.uk was, “There were no spin doctors, no rebuttal units, no focus groups, no electoral machines to harvest votes. The glib and oily arts of the more mature democracies have yet to take root here. There was also politics on the pavement, Tunisians rejoicing in the right to disagree in public, to press a leaflet (or printed sheet of paper containing information for advertising) into the hands of a neighbor in a shopping center, to post a flyer on a billboard.” All of this is new to Tunisian people, whereas 10 months ago they would have been jailed for doing any one of these things. And yet more than 100 registered parties emerged to contest the election.

Reporters then asked many Tunisian people: “why did they choose an Islamic party like Ennahda?” Most of the voters didn’t even mention religion as their main focus on voting for Ennahda. Instead, it was the fact that they talked about honesty in public life, about the need for a government that would not steal from its people.

All the major changes in the Tunisian government that led to the overthrow of President Ben Ali started when 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian civilian, lit himself on fire in protest of police and ill treatment. The people of Tunisia now call him the “hero of Tunisia,” and they have made a huge portrait of his face in honor of Bouazizi. And on Feb. 17, the main square in Tunis that was previously called “November 7,” after the date of Ben Ali’s take-over in 1987, was renamed after Mr. Bouazizi. But that’s not all because Mr. Bouazizi’s self-immolation act has inspired other non-Muslim majority places in the world also.

Bertrand Delanoe, who is the mayor of Paris, announced on Feb. 4 that, as a tribute to honor Bouazizi, a square in Paris will be named after him — the place where Mohamed Bouazizi was unveiled four days after his death. Ever since Bouazizi’s self-immolation act, the country of Tunisia has faced revolutionary protests that have led to more than 200 casualties of Tunisian people. But the date of Oct. 27, 2011, marks the first day where all those innocent death tolls really paid their price now that the Tunisian people have a form a government that they want.

Unlike its neighbor Libya, Tunisia’s transition from authoritarian rule has been largely peaceful. They were the beginners of this revolutionary wave, and now they are the first winners of this spring going on in the Arab world. The question now becomes “Who will be the next leader replaced in the Arab world?”

Omar Thabet is a State News guest columnist and journalism sophomore. Reach him at thabetom@msu.edu.