Tunisian parties vow to fight president’s ‘autocratic rule’
By Tarek Amara
TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisia’s political events pledged to battle President Kais Saied’s choice to exclude them from key political reforms together with the drafting of a brand new structure, accusing him of in search of to consolidate autocratic rule.
Saied, who took government energy final summer season and dissolved parliament to rule by decree, has since stated he’ll substitute the democratic 2014 structure with a brand new structure by way of a July 25 referendum and maintain new parliamentary elections in December.
On Friday, he named a regulation professor to go an advisory committee of authorized and political science consultants to draft the brand new structure for a “new republic”, excluding political events from the method.
The Nationwide Salvation Entrance, an umbrella for a number of events and activists together with Ennahda, Coronary heart of Tunisia, Karama and the Residents Towards the Coup coalition, decried the transfer as one other harmful step in the direction of entrenching one-man rule.
“We’ll face the brand new step of his autocratic rule with protests in streets and by uniting the opposition entrance to overthrow the coup,” Ennahda official Riadh Chaibi instructed Reuters.
Saied denies his opponents’ accusations that he staged a coup to grab energy, saying his intervention was authorized and mandatory to avoid wasting Tunisia from years of political paralysis and financial stagnation by the hands of a corrupt, self-serving elite who had taken management of presidency.
The president has nonetheless attracted broad opposition throughout Tunisia’s political spectrum.
The Free Constitutional Get together, whose chief Abir Moussi is a supporter of the late autocratic president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and a bitter foe of Ennahda, additionally rejected the transfer to exclude events from the drafting of a brand new structure and different reforms. It known as for a mass protest on June 18.
“What is occurring is a dictatorship however we is not going to go away Tunisia hostage in Saied fingers,” Moussi stated.
In a joint assertion, the Attayar, Republican and Ettakatol events known as on events, civil society and nationwide leaders to confront “this farce and overthrow the coup”.
(Reporting By Tarek Amara; Enhancing by Pravin Char)
