Tunisia has entered a new era with the inaugural session of its first-ever democratically elected constituent assembly, 10 months after a popular uprising ended years of dictatorship.
The 217-member assembly, the first elected body of the Arab Spring, was expected to confirm a deal whereby the Islamist Ennahda party and two other parties split the country's top three jobs between themselves.
The MPs, who will be tasked with drafting a new constitution and paving the way to fresh elections, sang the national anthem as the session got under way in the Bardo palace on the outskirts of Tunis on Tuesday.
"I give thanks to God, to all those martyred and wounded and those who fought so we could witness this historic day," Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi told AFP after the opening.
After longtime dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's ouster in January and internationally acclaimed polls on October 23, the inauguration marked yet another landmark in the Arab Spring trailblazers' democratic revolution.
"This event is like a second independence for Tunisia," said Ahmed Mestiri, an iconic figure in the struggle for Tunisia's 1956 independence from France.
The Bardo palace was where the ousted regime's parliament would sit and also where the 1881 treaty that paved the way for the
French protectorate.
"This place was all lies and pretence, now it becomes a real chamber representing the people. I am overcome with awe," Moncef Marzouki, Tunisia's president in waiting, told AFP.
Radiating with pride, the deputies embraced one another, chatted and laughed under the gilded cupola and glittering crystal chandelier of their new home.
Several hundred demonstrators, including relatives of some of the protesters killed in the uprising, nevertheless greeted the newly elected MPs at the Bardo palace with a warning.
"We're watching you," read some of the banners.
Despite Ennahda's assurances, some Tunisians have expressed concern that an Islamist-dominated Tunisia could roll back hard-earned rights such as the Code of Personal Status, seen notably as one of the Arab world's most progressive sets of laws on
women.
