Amine Landoulsi/Associated Press
People placed flowers at the site outside his home where opposition leader Chokri Belaid was killed the day before on Thursday in Tunis.
TUNIS — New political uncertainties surfaced on Thursday in Tunisia, a day after officials moved quickly to contain the fallout from the assassination of a leading opposition figure. A plan to reshape the Islamist-led administration in favor of national unity government reportedly encountered strong resistance as protesters again demonstrated on the streets of the capital and elsewhere.
News reports on Thursday said the country’s dominant Ennahda Party had rejected the plan to dissolve the government, as proposed Wednesday by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.
“The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party,” Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda’s vice president was quoted as saying in news agency dispatches. “We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with others parties about forming a coalition government.”
The reported statement appeared to inject a new element of political tension into an already fraught and fragile situation.
Residents of Tunis said hundreds of protesters — far fewer than on Wednesday — took to the streets on Thursday while the French embassy said on its Web site it would close its schools in the capital on Friday and Saturday for fear of renewed outbursts of violence.
France is the former colonial power in Tunisia and has traditionally had a strong diplomatic presence here.
In the southern mining city of Gafsa, The Associated Press reported, citing a local radio station, riots broke out and police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones at the police. The city is known as a powerful base of support for the slain politician, Chokri Belaid.
Some reports also spoke of tear gas being fired in the capital as protesters again converged on the interior ministry in what has been depicted as the worst crisis since the so-called Arab Spring first took root in Tunisia more than two years ago.
Fresh unrest loomed with the prospect on Friday of a general strike agreed by Labor leaders on the same day as the funeral of Mr. Belaid, likely to be a highly emotive event in its own right.
Additionally, Friday, the Muslim holy day, has been associated with unrest and protest since the beginning of the revolts that overthrew or challenged dictatorial regimes across the Arab world and North Africa. Mr. Belaid was one of Tunisia’s best-known human rights defenders and a fierce critic of the ruling Islamist party.
His killing placed dangerous new strains on a society struggling to reconcile its identity as a long-vaunted bastion of Arab secularism with its new role as a proving ground for one of the region’s ascendant Islamist parties.
The explosion of popular anger, which led to the death of a police officer in the capital, posed a severe challenge to Ennahda, which came to power promising a model government that blended Islamist principles with tolerant pluralism.
Mr. Belaid was shot and killed outside his home in an upscale Tunis neighborhood as he was getting into his car on Wednesday morning. The interior minister, citing witnesses, said that two unidentified gunmen had fired on Mr. Belaid, striking him with four bullets.
The killing, which analysts said was the first confirmed political assassination here since the overthrow of the autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was a dark turn for the country that was the birthplace of the Arab uprisings of two years ago. It resonated in countries like Egypt and Libya that are struggling to contain political violence while looking to Tunisia’s turbulent but hopeful transition as a reassuring example.
“Confronting violence, radicalism and the forces of darkness is the main priority for societies if they want freedom and democracy,” Amr Hamzawy, a member of Egypt’s main secular opposition coalition, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Assassinating Chokri Belaid is warning bell in Tunisia, and in Egypt, too.”
The response by Tunisian officials was being closely watched. President Moncef Marzouki cut short an overseas trip to deal with the crisis. Mr. Jebali, the prime minister, called the killing a “heinous crime against the Tunisian people, against the principles of the revolution and the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other.”
Bowing to the outrage, he said cabinet ministers would be replaced with technocrats not tied to any party until elections could be held.
The announcement, which had been expected for months, held out the promise that Tunisia might continue to avoid the political chaos that has plagued its neighbors. Since the uprising, the country has held successful elections, leading to a coalition government merging Ennahda and two center-left parties. An assembly writing the country’s constitution has circumscribed the role of Islamic law, allowing Tunisia to avoid the arguments over basic legal matters that have led to protracted unrest in Egypt.
New Political Uncertainty Grips Tunisia After Assassination, Reports Say
This article
New Political Uncertainty Grips Tunisia After Assassination, Reports Say
can be opened in url
https://lightningnewster.blogspot.com/2013/02/new-political-uncertainty-grips-tunisia.html
New Political Uncertainty Grips Tunisia After Assassination, Reports Say
