Both questions were in play in Tunis on the campaign's last day, as chic women distributed fliers for the leftist Democratic Pole movement on Tunis' leafy main boulevard, and caravans of honking cars carted supporters of the Islamist Al-Nahda party to a final rally.
At the outdoor rally grounds, the impressive organizational skills of Al-Nahda were on display, as lines of young men in T-shirts emblazoned with their party's logo shepherded thousands of supporters to plastic chairs (separate sections for men and women). Veiled women handed out packets of information in English and French to the foreign press, and others staffed an Islamic bookstall at the entrance.
Al-Nahda, which was banned under the previous regime and which conducted violent attacks in the 1990s, quickly rebuilt itself, drawing manpower and donations from thousands who were imprisoned in past decades. Its leaders, including founder and longtime exile Rashid Ghannouchi (whom I will interview for my next column), insist they now want to play by democratic rules. They say they won't change the liberal Tunisian family-status law that protects women's rights.
But many in Tunisia's secular, educated middle class, especially women, distrust those promises. They accuse Al-Nahda of "double discourse," especially Ghannouchi. They say he talks moderately about democracy to a Western audience, while, for example, he called for a caliphate when speaking in Cairo. Al-Nahda leaders insist they don't want a religious state, but at the rally I attended, one candidate told the crowd, "Sharia should be the reference for all laws."
So the proof of the Islamists' intentions will only come after elections.
