Beji Caid Essebsi, president of Nida Tounes, a secular political coalition, said when Ennahda won a "relative majority" in the October 2011 elections — which he called free and transparent — it didn't intend to govern the new order, but rather participate in the political process like other parties. However, emboldened by the National Constituent Assembly election results, Ennahda thought creating a coalition with two other parties would give it the ticket to rule, Essebsi said, while at a conference in Tunisia's capital, organized by Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

Ennahda leaders rejected his criticism, which they said was not based on facts, but instead rooted in unsubstantiated claims. A figure in Tunisia's political scene since its independence, Essebsi occupies an intriguing, if not perplexing, space. In 2011, he served as prime minister in the months after the revolution. To some, he represents the dictatorial past, hardly the clean break from the previous repressive periods. Yet others credit his leadership in the country's initial path toward democracy and they now count on him to raise the secularist banner.

Tapping the scholarship of European intellectuals, Essebsi defined Islamism as a movement which considers Islam as a political ideology aiming for the Islamization of society and establishment of an Islamic state. Although Ennahda falls under that notion, Essebsi said, once it came to power, it attempted to build an alliance with secular and socialist parties.

"This was an unnatural coalition," he said, speaking through a translator.