AP Interview: Tunisia Islamist party counters president
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — The leader of Tunisia’s Islamist party and speaker of parliament said Tuesday that his party is working to form a “national front” to counter President Kais Saied’s decision to suspend the legislature, fire top government officials and take control of the fragile democracy amid the country’s multi-layered crisis.
Ennahdha party head Rachid Ghannouchi told The Associated Press in a video call that the goal is to pressure the president “to demand the return to a democratic system.”
Ghannouchi claimed that groups that attacked his party's offices in several cities during nationwide demonstrations leading up to the president's actions Sunday night organized online and were the same that later celebrated the president's actions in the streets of Tunis, the capital.
The groups “are closer to anarchist groups,” and “attribute themselves” to the president, he alleged, rejecting the suggestion that they may be citizens expressing discontent with the nation's largest party.
Widespread concern in Tunisia and abroad has been voiced since the series of decisions by Saied to halt political life and most government action with the sudden firing of the prime minister, the defense and justice ministers and the freezing of parliament.
Ghannouchi and others were locked out of parliament on Monday.
More than a half-dozen civil organizations, including the powerful Tunisian General Labor Union, issued a joint statement Tuesday asking Saied for a road map of fixes to the country's problems. They also warned against “any illegitimate and unjustified extension of the suspension of the activities of state institutions,” and said a one-month deadline in the Tunisian Constitution must be respected.
The president invoked a constitutional article that allows him to assume...
