Nothing is going any more between the Islamist party Ennahdha, the majority in the Parliament, and the president, Kaïs Saïed. On the occasion of the start of Ramadan, the latter was particularly hostile towards the Islamists. Real opposition or attempted recovery?
Monday evening April 12, on the eve of Ramadan, the president, Kaïs Saïed, went to the Zitouna Mosque, the oldest in the Tunisian capital. He expressed his wishes to the Tunisians but also took the opportunity to attack, once again, political Islam, explains the Webdo news site.
“God spoke to Muslims and not to Islamists”, declared the Tunisian president during his speech, surrounded by the mufti of the Republic and the imam of the mosque. Affirming that the term “Islamist” made no sense and that it was a discourse adopted “by some” to sow discord in the country, Kaïs Saïed called for an end to the amalgamations between “ Muslims ”and“ Islamists ”.
Fight the Islamists
Nothing less than “coded messages” addressed to the Islamist Ennahdha party, analyzes the state newspaper La Presse. Especially since Kaïs Saïed had just returned from Egypt, where for three days he had been lavishly received by the president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, himself in direct confrontation with the Islamists in his country.
In Tunisia, some are already starting to talk about an attempt to eradicate political Islam by the head of state. “If the President of the Republic managed to free Tunisia from political Islam, that would be a very good thing,” Mabrouk Korchid, deputy and former minister, told La Presse newspaper.
An attempt at recovery?
But the independent Business News site points to the ambivalence of the Tunisian president’s speech and the use of “excessive religious references on the part of those who say that the state has no religion”. Some believe that Kaïs Saïed is seeking to recover the Islamist electorate in view of the next presidential election, in 2024. “The number one political opponent of the ‘nahdhaouis’ [the executives of the Ennahda party] tries to [make] share their business and could even ‘steal’ theirs in the future! ”, estimates the liberal site Kapitalis.
For several months now, Tunisians have been living at the rate of an unprecedented institutional crisis. In addition to his open conflict with the President of Parliament and leader of Ennahdha, Rached Ghannouchi, Kaïs Saïed is also in dispute with the head of government, Hichem Mechichi. Considering the latter as a puppet in the hands of the Islamists, he blocks a cabinet reshuffle, as well as a bill aimed at facilitating the establishment of the Constitutional Court. Since then, political life in Tunisia has been frozen for several months.
