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Less than two days after Tunisian President Kais Saied announced that he was suspending parliament and sacking the prime minister, he sacked the defense, interior and justice ministers, increasingly fearing that the recent measures do not constitute a coup.
The main political party, Ennahdha, is now calling for elections.
Rebellion?
Saied met with Tunisian civil society leaders on Tuesday, insisting that what he is doing is good for Tunisia.
“For me, it is really a coup, not a medical blow like that of Ben Ali. It is a coup d’état against the constitution, ”Souhayr Belhassen, Honorary President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), told RFI.
Belhassen was referring to the departure of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was in poor health when he fled the country in January 2011.
Saied has taken steps similar to those of Ben Ali, who declared a state of emergency following widespread protests in 2011, dissolved parliament and promised new parliamentary elections.
In his case, however, the armed forces were behind some lawmakers, while Saied sacked the defense minister.
Article 80 of the constitution says nothing about the limits of these measures, but it specifies that the president should have consulted the head of parliament Rached Ghannouchi as well as the head of government.
Call for elections
Ghannouchi heads the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha party and denies having been warned of Saied’s steps.
On Tuesday, Ennahdha announced that she was calling for “simultaneous early legislative and presidential elections to ensure the protection of the democratic process.”
He believes that this will prevent an autocratic regime from recovering in Tunisia.
Ennahdha denounced the coup and published a statement on social media on Tuesday afternoon calling on Tunisians to resist any attempt to divide the country and “avoid civil unrest”.
As one of the main political parties in Tunisia, it has won all of its legislative elections since 2011. However, its popular support has weakened over the years largely due to the perceived lack of vision for the country.
Ennahdha “neither solved unemployment problems nor stimulated economic growth. There is therefore a lot of resentment among Tunisians towards Ennahdha, ”explains Tunisian sociologist Mohammed Kerrou.
In addition, the General Union of Tunisian Workers, the country’s main union, supported Saied’s actions while calling on him to offer constitutional guarantees.
Tunisians resented the government and parliament, a point on which Saied capitalized, according to FIDH’s Belhassen.
“There were two powers facing each other, the weaker being that of Kais Saied and the stronger that of parliament and government,” she says.
“Faced with this, the daily was made up of details and fairly minor incidents that were inflated by one or the other camp and the health situation. Nobody took care of it, ”she adds, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the points of recent popular protest.
International reaction
The United States weighed in on the situation, initially calling on all parties involved to do nothing that could lead to violence.
Later, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called on Saied to “urge him to respect democracy” and maintain an open dialogue. The head of American diplomacy urged him to “maintain an open dialogue with all political actors and the Tunisian people”.
Blinken also pledged American support for the Tunisian economy and the fight against Covid-19.
He also described the brutal closure of the office of Al-Jazeera television station in Tunis as particularly disturbing.
In France, the spokesperson for Foreign Affairs noted that France “wants respect for the rule of law and a return, as soon as possible, to the normal functioning of institutions”.
Germany, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Nations have also expressed concern.
A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry, Maria Adebahr, told reporters that Germany was “very worried”, adding that “we do not want to talk about a coup”.
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