Several hundred demonstrators gathered on Tuesday in front of the seat of the Parliament in Tunis, where the deputies validated a large reshuffle of the government, to denounce the repression by the police of the movement of social protest, which began in the country at the mid-January.
Hundreds of people demonstrated on Tuesday, January 26, against the political class and the police repression near the barricaded seat of the Parliament in Tunis, where the deputies validated a large reshuffle of the government in a context of political tensions.
Deputies voted late Tuesday to trust the 11 new ministers, including those of the Interior, Justice and Health, despite controversies over several names and sharp criticism from President Kaïs Saïed. The head of government Hichem Mechichi assured Tuesday evening that his cabinet would listen to the young people who protest.
At the call of some thirty associations, the demonstrators, some of whom came on foot from the popular district of Ettadhamen, were prevented from arriving in front of the Assembly, relegated to an adjacent street by a very important police device. .
Some MPs protested against this massive deployment, calling for more dialogue in a country hit hard by the new coronavirus pandemic and its social fallout.
“Freedom, dignity for the people”, “Down with the police state“, launched the demonstrators, also chanting slogans against the government or against the main party in Parliament, the Islamist-inspired movement Ennahdha.
The demonstrators especially protested against the strategy of repression adopted in the face of the social protest movement, which erupted in mid-January in marginalized areas of the country, the day after the 10th anniversary of the revolution which brought down on January 14, 2011 the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, after twenty-three years in power.
For several nights, young people threw stones at the police deployed to enforce a curfew imposed for health reasons. Police fired tear gas and arrested more than a thousand young people, many of them minors, according to human rights activists who deplored abuses.
Clashes between police and demonstrators
Demonstrations demanding the release of those arrested and better social policy have also taken place, as health restrictions have affected the most vulnerable and cost tens of thousands of jobs. Unemployment affects more than one in three young people.
“The political actors produce the same strategies which until now have ended only in failures”, estimated the president of the Association of the Tunisian democratic women, Yosra Frawes. “Whether they change their model of governance, or they leave power.”
The unrest that had eased over the weekend resumed Tuesday in Sbeïtla, in a marginalized region of central Tunisia, the day after the death of a young man injured last week by a tear gas canister during a demonstration . Residents threw stones and police fired tear gas on the sidelines of the young man’s funeral, an AFP correspondent noted.
In Parliament, some opposition MPs brandished his portrait. The reshuffle has revived the divisions and animosities that paralyze the political class, in the midst of a social and health crisis.
Tunisia records more than 2,000 new confirmed cases and more than 50 deaths from Covid-19 every day, and doctors have warned of the growing difficulties in finding places in intensive care.
Struggle
A sign of growing divisions, President Kaïs Saïed criticized the future executive on Monday evening, regretting that he had not been consulted. He blasted the absence of women among proposed ministers and accused one of the chosen ministers of being “linked to a corruption case” and three others of being suspected of “conflict of interest”, without specifying names .
Hichem Mechichi, appointed in August by President Saïed, had initially put together a team comprising many officials or academics, including some close to the president. But he gradually moved away from Kaïs Saïed, until he reconstituted his team with the support of Ennahdha, who is leading a standoff with the president.
This reshuffle comes less than five months after the current executive came to power, which succeeded another government also in place for less than five months. The 2019 legislative elections, which resulted in a Parliament divided into a myriad of parties forming fragile alliances, increased instability.
With AFP
