Tunisian presidential candidates saying it with music
Tunisian presidential candidates are using an arsenal of musical to try to woo the young as well as evoke nostalgia for past in their campaigns for the elections scheduled for Sept. 15.
Ululations, drums and strobe lights catapulted Tunisian presidential candidate Abdelfattah Mourou onto the stage at the Palais des Congrès in central Tunis. A passerby might have mistaken the event for a wedding, instead of the launch of an Ennahda election campaign.
Over synthesized notes from a kanun, a string instrument, voices chanted, “Mourou, Our President, Mourou,” in an anthem recorded for the campaign. The 71-year-old Mourou, who has distanced himself from his party’s more socially conservative positions, danced jovially in his trademark jebba. The national anthem was also among the music played, and Islamic prayers were invoked.
Ennahda's choice of Mourou as its first presidential candidate and the selection of music played at his campaign launch perhaps reflects the moderate Islamist party's ongoing wariness of polarizing the country and its goal of generating broad appeal. Mourou is appreciated among urban intellectual circles and within his party as an educated and worldly politician. The media often notes that he can speak as well as sing in German.
Mourou's anthem is one of the more recent additions to Ennahda's playlist. In 2016, when the party wanted to shed its Islamist label in favor of a Muslim democratic image, it came up with a series of soccer-style chants, which have been dusted off for the current campaign.
