Protesters celebrate President Kais Saied’s decision, shouting with joy, honking horns and waving Tunisian flags
TUNIS
Tunisian troops surrounded parliament and blocked its speaker from entering after the president suspended the legislature and fired the prime minister following violent nationwide protests over the country’s economic troubles and virus crisis.
Protesters celebrated President Kais Saied’s decision late Sunday night, shouting with joy, honking horns and waving Tunisian flags. But his critics accused him of a power grab that threatens Tunisia’s young democracy.
Chief among them was the parliament speaker and head of Islamist movement Ennahdha, Rached Ghannouchi, who called it “a coup against the constitution and the (Arab Spring) revolution.”
The president sacked Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and ordered parliament closed for 30 days, following a day of angry street protests against the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saied also sacked the defence minister and the acting justice minister on Monday, a day after ousting the prime minister and suspending parliament.
A statement from the presidency announced the dismissals of Defence Minister Ibrahim Bartaji and acting justice minister Hasna Ben Slimane, who is also government spokeswoman.
Saied on Monday assigned Khaled Yahyaoui, the Director General of the Presidential Security unit and an ally to the president, to supervise the Interior Ministry after dismissing the government on Sunday, two security sources said according to Reuters.
Saied’s dramatic move – a decade on from Tunisia’s 2011 revolution – comes even though the constitution enshrines a parliamentary democracy and largely limits presidential powers to security and diplomacy.
It “is a coup d’etat against the revolution and against the constitution,” Ennahdha, which was the biggest party in Tunisia’s fractious ruling coalition, charged in a Facebook post, warning that its members “will defend the revolution”.
The crisis follows prolonged deadlock between the president, the premier and Ghannouchi, which has crippled the Covid response as deaths have surged to one of the world’s highest per capita rates.
“I have taken the necessary decisions to save Tunisia, the state and the Tunisian people,” Saied declared in a statement on Sunday, a day that had seen Covid street protests flare in multiple cities.
The president’s announcement sparked jubilant rallies by many thousands of his supporters who flooded the streets of the capital late Sunday to celebrate and wave the national flag, as car horns sounded through the night and fireworks lit up the sky.
