TUNIS – Tunisia on Monday unveiled unprecedented new freedoms and announced the release of political prisoners after a popular revolt but the ousted president’s party held on to key posts in the new cabinet.
Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi will remain as head of the transitional government, which will prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections after former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali resigned and fled on Friday. The ruling party also retained the key foreign, interior, defence and finance ministries in the new government of national unity. It includes three leaders of the country’s legal opposition as well as representatives of civil society. But it excluded banned political parties including the Communists and the Islamist Ennahdha party.
However, Ghannouchi said that all political parties will be allowed, media will be freed and a ban on the free operation of non-governmental groups including Tunisia’s main human rights group, the Human Rights League, will be lifted.
“We announce total freedom of information,” Ghannouchi told reporters in Tunis after announcing the new cabinet. “We have decided to allow all associations to have normal activities without any interference on the part of the government,” he said. The prime minister said the new government had also scrapped the information ministry – a widely hated organ responsible for official propaganda and media controls.
The prime minister has vowed there will be “zero tolerance” for anyone threatening the security of the country after the authorities arrested the former head of Ben Ali’s guard for allegedly plotting against the state. Ben Ali’s nephew, Kais Ben Ali, has also been arrested along with 10 other people in the central town of Msaken – the Ben Ali family’s ancestral home – for allegedly “shooting at random” from police cars, officials said.
