Ennahda to win 41% of parliamentary seats in Tunisia polls: Ghannouchi

TUNIS

By Adel al-Thabti

Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda movement, has predicted that his movement would win 41 percent of seats in the next parliament in the country's upcoming parliamentary election.

"We expect that Ennahda would win big like in the past," Ghannouchi said in an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, to be fully published on Thursday.

In the 2011 election, the Islamist movement won 41 percent of seats (89 seats) in the 217-member Constituent Assembly.

"We expect that we will win a number of seats close to this," Ghannouchi said.

Ghannouchi said that his movement is looking forward to turning Tunisia into a hub of Islamic finance.

"We want to turn Tunisia into a hub for Islamic economy," he said.

Tunisia is slated to hold legislative elections on October 26, to be followed by presidential polls on November 23.

Ghannouchi said that his movement is now focusing on the upcoming parliamentary election.

"After this, we will open the file of the presidential poll," he said.

"Our position is that we will not run for this post," he added.

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