TUNIS: Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned on Tuesday after failing to replace a government pulled apart by acrimony between his Islamist allies and their secular opponents.

Jebali had threatened to quit if his plan for a non-partisan cabinet of technocrats to lead the north African country into early elections foundered.

In the end it was his own party, Ennahda, that rejected the proposal, prolonging the political stand-off that has cast a shadow over Tunisia’s fledgling democracy and deepened an economic crisis.

“I vowed that if my initiative did not succeed, I would resign and … I have already done so,” Jebali told a news conference after meeting with President Moncef Marzouki.

Tunisia’s deepest political crisis since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali began when leading secular opposition politician Chokri Belaid was gunned down outside his home in Tunis on February 6.

No one claimed responsibility for the killing, but it deepened the misgivings of secularists who believe Jebali’s government has failed to deal firmly enough with religious extremists threatening the country’s stability.

Protesters poured onto the streets in the following days and Marzouki’s secularist party threatened to quit the coalition government.
Jebali said he would try to form a cabinet of apolitical technocrats to restore calm and take Tunisia to elections, but did not consult his Ennahda allies or their secular coalition partners before making the proposal.
Several secular politicians backed the plan but Ennahda, winner of most parliamentary seats in elections that followed Ben Ali’s overthrow, opposed the idea, fearing it would be sidelined from power.
Jebali bet his own job on the outcome, saying he would quit if he was rebuffed, and lost.
He quits 15 months into the job, although political experts said Marzouki was likely to re-appoint him as caretaker premier before a new leader is appointed.
Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi has said he wants to see Jebali head a new coalition. President Marzouki was due to meet Ghannouchi on Wednesday to ask him to name a prime minister. But Jebali, announcing his resignation late on Tuesday, said he would not lead another government without assurances on the timing of fresh elections and a new constitution. No government would be viable without Ennahda’s blessing given its strength in parliament.

Ghannouchi has said it is essential that Islamists and secular parties share power now and in the future, and that his party was willing to compromise over control of important ministries such as foreign affairs, justice and interior.

“Ennahda is in negotiations with political parties to form a national coalition government”, said Fethi Ayadi, a senior Ennahda official.
Iyed Dahmani, a leader of the secular Republican Party, said some kind of agreement was vital.
“We are in real trouble, politically and economically,” he said.

The crisis has disrupted efforts to revitalize an economy hit hard by the disorder that followed the overthrow of veteran strongman Ben Ali. Tunisia has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a $1.78 billion loan and politicians said Jebali’s inability to re-establish a functioning government had slowed efforts to restore normality. Credit rating service Standard and Poor’s said on Tuesday it had lowered its long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit rating on Tunisia, citing “a risk that the political situation could deteriorate further amid a worsening fiscal, external and economic outlook”.

TUNIS, Tunisia: The funeral of an assassinated leftist politician drew hundreds of thousands of mourners chanting anti-government slogans to the Tunisian capital Friday — as well as gangs of armed youths who smashed cars and clashed with police just outside the cemetery.

Hours later, the prime minister insisted he’d try to form a newgovernment despite his own party’s opposition, threatening to resign if his proposal wasn’t accepted.

The events added to the growing turmoil in Tunisia, where the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been shaken by religious divides, political wrangling and economic struggles. It’s been a perilous stretch for a country many hoped would be a model for other post-revolutionary Arab states.

People from across the nation flowed into Tunis to lay to rest 48-year-old Chokri Belaid, a lawyer and top figure in the Popular Front alliance who was shot dead Wednesday. Thousands helped carry the coffin of the so-called “defender of the poor” from his parents’ home to the Jellaz Cemetery a few kilometers away.

The funeral “was one of the most impressive in the history of Tunisia,” historian Slahhedine Jourchi said, as demonstrators marched and chanted against the ruling Islamists. The turnout at the funeral was boosted due to a general strike called by Tunisia’s most powerful labor union in honor of Belaid.

Hamma Hammami of the Tunisian Workers Party gave a eulogy as Belaid’s friends and relatives wept.

“Sleep well Chokri. We will continue the fight,” the leftist leader promised as the acrid smell of tear gas from the clashes near the cemetery invaded the air.

Tunisians overthrew their long-ruling dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, kicking off the Arab Spring revolutions. In the two years since, a moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, won elections and has governed in a coalition with two secular parties.

But the ruling coalition’s failure to stem the country’s economic crisis and stop the often-violent rise of hardline Salafi Muslims have drawn fierce criticism, especially from staunch secularists such as Belaid. He had also accused Ennahda of backing some of the political violence through its own goon squads.

Belaid was shot dead while in his car outside his home by an unknown assailant. Hours after his killing Wednesday, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali said he would form a new, technocratic government to guide the country to elections — but Ennahda, his own party, rejected that idea soon afterward.

Late Friday, Jebali renewed his proposal for a new government, which would be a key concession to the country’s opposition. “I am convinced this is the best solution for the current situation in Tunisia,” Jebali said, offering to resign if the elected assembly did not accept his new proposed cabinet.

Although Jebali said he was confident he could get Ennahda’s support, his party’s earlier rejection of the proposal exposed its own internal divisions between moderates and hardliners, and it remained unclear how the prime minister planned to pull enough support to his side.

“With his plan for a new government, Jebali has come out openly against the hardliners within his own party and limited his room for maneuver,” said Riccardo Fabiani, an analyst with the Eurasia Group.

For many Tunisians, especially the youth, the political wrangling is especially frustrating because it distracts from the country’s economic problems.

The national average unemployment rate is 18 percent, but for youth it is nearly twice that. And many fear that the ongoing political instability is fueling economic despair as well as crime, which is said to be on the rise since the fall of Ben Ali’s police state.

As Belaid was being buried, the black smoke of burning cars mingled with clouds of white tear gas as masked and hooded youths brandishing machetes and clubs threw rocks at riot police nearby. Journalists reported being attacked for their cameras and mobile phones.

Many of Belaid’s supporters, especially those on social media sites, speculated that the youths could have been thugs hired by Ennahda.

But Ennahda has denied it ever backs violence, and since the revolution, young men have often taken advantage of political demonstrations to ransack shops and break into cars.

“These kids are uncontrollable and don’t follow any political ideology,” said Moncef Chebbi, 68, a retired computer programmer attending the funeral. He said they came from a nearby low-income neighborhood. “This is very disappointing. It’s a shame.”

TUNIS: Tunisia’s ruling Islamists dissolved thegovernment and promised rapid elections in a bid to restore calm after the killing of an opposition leader sparked the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago.

The prime minister’s announcement late on Wednesday that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the end of a day which had begun with the gunning down of Chokri Belaid, a left-wing lawyer with a modest political following but who spoke for many who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

During the day, protesters battled police in the streets of the capital and other cities, including Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the Jasmine Revolution that toppled Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

In Tunis, the crowd set fire to the headquarters of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which won the most seats in an legislative election 16 months ago.

Calls for a general strike on Thursday could bring more trouble though Belaid’s family said his funeral, another possible flashpoint, might not be held until Friday.

Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali of Ennahda spoke on television on Wednesday evening to declare that weeks of talks among the various political parties on reshaping the government had failed and that he would replace his entire cabinet with non-partisan technocrats until elections could be held as soon as possible.

It followed weeks of deadlock in the three-party coalition. The small, secular Congress for the Republic, whose leader Moncef Marzouki has served as Tunisia’s president, threatened to withdraw unless Ennahda replaced some of its ministers.

Wednesday’s events, in which the Interior Ministry said one police officer was killed, appeared to have moved Jebali, who will stay on as premier, to take action.

“After the failure of negotiations between parties on a cabinet reshuffle, I have decided to form a small technocrat government,” he said.

“The murder of Belaid is a political assassination and the assassination of the Tunisian revolution,” he said earlier.

It was not clear whom he might appoint but the move seemed to be widely welcomed and streets were mostly calm after dark.

A leader in the secular Republican Party gave Jebali’s move a cautious welcome.

“The prime minister’s decision is a response to the opposition’s aspirations,” Mouldi Fahem told Reuters. “We welcome it principle. We are waiting for details.”

Beji Caid Essebsi, leader of the secular party Nida Touns, who was premier after the uprising, told Reuters: “The decision to form a small cabinet is a belated move but an important one.”

DIVISIONS

The widespread protests following Belaid’s assassination showed the depth of division between Islamists and secular movements fearful that freedoms of expression, cultural liberty and women’s rights were under threat just two years after the popular uprising ended decades of Western-backed dictatorship.

“This is a black day in the history of modern Tunisia. Today we say to the Islamists, ‘get out’, enough is enough,” said Souad, a 40-year-old schoolteacher outside the ministry.

“Tunisia will sink in blood if you stay in power.”