TUNIS – Thousands of protesters put Tunisia’s new government under pressure on Tuesday with activists rejecting the leadership just days after the ouster of the Arab state’s former strongman.
Tunisia’s largest trade union and other groups have refused to recognise a transitional government that contains eight ministers from the discredited regime of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Key Islamist leader Sadok Chourou, who was imprisoned for 20 years under the old regime, led one of the rallies on the main avenue in central Tunis that was broken up by riot police firing volleys of tear gas. “The new government does not represent the people and has to fall,” Chourou, 63, ex-leader of the banned Ennahdha (Awakening) movement, told AFP.
Protesters chanted: “We can live on bread and water alone but not with the RCD,” a reference to the former ruling party, which has held on to key posts in the new government including the foreign, defence and interior ministries. Police also broke up another rally in Tunis amid growing opposition to the government line-up. All public assemblies are officially banned under the rules of a state of emergency declared shortly before disgraced president Ben Ali resigned and fled on Friday. Thousands more protested in the cities of Sfax and Sidi Bouzid — the city where a wave of social protests against the Ben Ali regime started last month after a 26-year-old vendor set himself on fire in a protest against police.
There has been a spate of apparent copycat public suicide attempts in other countries including Algeria, Egypt and Mauritania. Tunisia’s largest trade union, the UGTT meanwhile refused to recognise the new government, its spokesman told AFP. Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, one of the eight ministers staying on from the previous government, said on Monday that he and the others had helped “preserve the national interest” during days of chaos in the country.
“They kept their posts because we need them at this time,” Ghannouchi said on French radio Europe 1. “All of them have clean hands,” he said. Ghannouchi also said that exiled Islamist leader Rached Ghannouchi, who is not a relative of the prime minister, would only be able to return to the North African state from Britain once an amnesty law had been approved. The popular Islamist was sentenced to life in prison under the old regime for plotting against the state.
