Ennahda, which had a long history of opposition here before Mr. Ben Ali eviscerated it a decade ago, is widely expected to fare the best, and no one pretends that it owes its popularity only to its financial clout. Its moderate and modern brand of Islamic politics has struck a chord with many Tunisians. 
 
 But for months, it has been at the center of attacks from liberal rivals and liberal-leaning election officials who accuse it of taking foreign money, mainly from the Persian Gulf. Islamist groups from Egypt to Lebanon are widely believed to rely on such support from the wealthier and more conservative gulf nations, but the charges have resonated especially loudly in Tunisia, in part because regulators have sought to stamp it out. 
 
 “Everybody says that Ennahda is backed by money from the Arabian gulf,” said Ahmed Ibrahim, the founder of the liberal Democratic Modernist Pole coalition, calling the outsize influence of foreign money a threat to Tunisia’s “fragile democracy.” 
 
 Though Ennahda’s sources of financing have not been disclosed, its resources are evident. The first party to open offices in towns across the country, Ennahda soon blanketed Tunisia with fliers, T-shirts, signs and bumper stickers. Unlike other parties here, it operates out of a gleaming high-rise in downtown Tunis, gives away professionally published paperbacks in several languages to lay out its platform, distributes wireless headsets for simultaneous translation at its news conferences and hands out bottled water to the crowds at rallies. 
 
 Ennahda party members have sponsored local charitable events like a recent group wedding for eight couples in the town of Den Den, or giveaways of meat for the feast at the end of Ramadan. 
 
 Alarmed at the flood of money, the commission overseeing the political transition sought last June to impose rules limiting campaign spending, banning foreign contributions and even barring candidates from giving interviews to foreign-owned news media, a move thought to be aimed mainly at thwarting the potential of the Qatar-owned network Al Jazeera to favor Ennahda candidates. 
 
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 In response, Ennahda withdrew its representative on the commission. Party officials have variously said that they pulled out because the commission was overstepping its authority, or that the restrictions curtailed their ability to reach Tunisians in expensive precincts abroad. But members of the commission say Ennahda objected only to the restrictions on foreign fund-raising. 
 
 “I believe it was because they rely on foreign funds,” Latifa Lakther, vice president of the commission, who acknowledged a personal bias against the party. “It is logical. They have a lot of money, and they left because of that law concerning financing.” 
 
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 Ennahda officials say they have followed the rules, which apply only to the final weeks of the campaign, and they deny any foreign financing. The accusations about gulf money are “completely baseless,” the party’s founder, Rachid Ghannouchi, said last week at a news conference. After supporting itself for 40 years of oppression and exile, he said, his party now counts members of the Tunisian elite among its donors. Moreover, he added, his moderate and democratic Islamic politics have hardly endeared him to the gulf autocracies; he is barred from Iran and Saudi Arabia. 
 
 Other party officials, though, have acknowledged that party members directed contributions from the gulf to charitable efforts, like helping Libyan refugees. “Ennahda is a social phenomenon before it is a political party,” said Said Ferjani, a member of its political bureau, adding that in the future the group planned to divide its social service work more clearly from its political activities to clear up any impression of a benefit to its candidates. 
 
 Ennahda’s supporters, for their part, point to Slim Riahi, founder of the Free Patriotic Union party, which election officials say has been another one of the biggest spenders here. An expatriate businessman who made an oil fortune in Libya, Mr. Riahi has no history in politics, scant history in Tunisia and no discernible ideology. His party’s best-known candidate is the former soccer star Shokri Waa. Asked whether the party was better described as center-left or center-right, a spokesman said, “Center-center.” 
 
 “There was a political void that Ben Ali left, and we saw that many political parties were going to take advantage of this to manipulate the Tunisian people,” said Fouad Maatook, a co-founder of the party, explaining its creation. 
 
 In an effort to shake his party’s reputation as a rich man’s plaything, Mr. Riahi recently dropped by a Tunis slum in his chauffeured Porsche Cayenne, making a videotaped visit to the home of Aouiha Mimouni. Elderly, nearly deaf and unable to remember her own age, she was sitting on a frayed mattress on the cement floor of her dark, unheated room. 
 
 After he left the building, Ms. Mimouni said she had no idea who he was or why he had come. 
 
 Ennahda’s main rival, the Progressive Democratic Party, has also advertised heavily on billboards around the country in a full Western-style political campaign rivaling Mr. Riahi’s. In the final rallies, the party’s leaders publicly thanked but did not name the Tunisian businesspeople who it said had paid for its lavish campaign. 
 
 But Tunisian radio programs have carried testimonies of former party members who said they defected because of its financial reliance on people who profited under Mr. Ben Ali’s corrupt government. And as the party’s lead candidate, a lawyer in a well-worn glen-plaid suit, tried to hand out fliers on the streets of the hard-pressed town of Kasserine, some said they doubted the party’s credibility. 
 
 “All these guys are ex-R.C.D.,” Hasan Guermit, 24 and unemployed, referring to the former governing party. “They come to the martyrs’ neighborhood to get out votes, but then they will turn against us.” He said he was leaning toward Ennahda. ||||| Tunisians are set to vote in elections that are a culmination of a popular uprising that ended decades of authoritarian rule and set off similar rebellions across the Middle East. 
 
 Electoral workers check ballot boxes at a polling station in Mnihla near Tunis, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. Tunis was filled with rival rallies throbbing with music as the political parties marked the end... (Associated Press) 
 
 Tunisians walk past bills presenting candidates standing for national elections pasted on a wall in Tunis, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. Tunisians on Sunday will elect an assembly that will appoint a new government... (Associated Press) 
 
 Electoral workers and Tunisian military carry voting boxes to a polling station in Mnihla near Tunis, Saturday Oct. 22, 2011. Tunisia's capital throbs with excitement as political parties hold final... (Associated Press) 
 
 Tunisians pass election wall posters in Tunis, Saturday Oct. 22, 2011. Tunisia's capital throbs with excitement as political parties hold final rallies with rock-star soundtracks ahead of the country's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Tunisians on Sunday will elect an assembly that will appoint a new government and then write the country's constitution to replace the 23-year presidency of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown by the month-long uprising on Jan. 14. 
 
 Tunisia's revolution set off a series of similar uprisings across the Middle East that are now being called the Arab Spring, and if Tunisia's elections produce an effective new government they will serve as an inspiration to pro-democracy advocates across the region. 
 
 The elections are also being closely watched because the front-runner, Ennahda, is a moderate Islamic party whose victory, especially in a comparatively secular society like Tunisia, could have wide implications for similar religious parties in the region. 
 
 The campaign season has been marked by controversies over advertising, fears over society's religious polarization and concerns about voter apathy, but in the run up to the vote a mood of optimism and excitement in the capital was palpable. 
 
 There are 7.5 million potential voters, though only 4.4 million of them, or just under 60 percent, are actually registered. People can vote with their identity cards, but only at certain stations, which some fear may cause confusion during the polls. 
 
 Voters in each of the country's 33 districts _ six of which are abroad _ have a choice of between around 40 and 80 electoral lists, consisting of parties and independent candidates. 
 
 A proportional representation system will likely mean that no political party will dominate the assembly, which is expected to be divided roughly between the Ennahda party, centrist parties and leftist parties, requiring coalitions and compromises during the writing of the constitution. 
 
 In the 10 months since the uprising, Tunisia's economy, part of the reason for the revolution in the first place, has only become worse as tourists and foreign investors have stayed away. 
 
 Many have expressed indifference about the elections out of frustration that new jobs have yet to appear and life has not improved since the revolution.
– With Tunisians voting today in the Middle East's first elections since the dawn of the Arab Spring, analysts and citizens alike are looking to the vote for a sense of where Tunisia and democracy in the region might be heading, reports the AP. Tunisia's 7.5 million voters face an overwhelming list of up to 80 options, but most think the moderate Islamic party Ennahda—banned by the government more than a decade ago—will lead the voting. But the contentiousness of the vote is leading to charges all around that money is improperly influencing the elections, reports the New York Times. Ennahda allegedly is getting support from Persian Gulf governments, while some Islamists say liberal parties are receiving money from rich cronies of former dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and nearly everyone is fuming over Slim Riahi, an expatriate businessman who made a fortune in oil in Libya and now has founded a political party in Tunisia that seemingly has no stated ideology. “There was a political void that Ben Ali left, and we saw that many political parties were going to take advantage of this to manipulate the Tunisian people,” said one party leader.