Tunisia’s Interior Ministry said on Friday that President Kais Saied was facing “serious threats” against his person, in a country in the throes of a political crisis since he assumed full powers.
“According to reliable information and investigations still in progress the President of the Republic and the presidential institution are the targets of serious threats”, indicated to the press Fadhila Khelifi, spokesperson for the ministry.
According to her, the authorities have uncovered “a plan involving internal and external parties targeting the safety of the president”, with the aim of “undermining state security and creating chaos”.
She did not provide further details on the plan in question or the parties who would be behind it.
Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, leader of a coalition of opposition parties, was skeptical about this announcement from the Interior Ministry.
“It is to justify new arrests and to take revenge on his adversaries,” he told AFP. “The president is politically isolated and seeks to generate some sympathy among the people for him.”
The Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, President Saied’s pet peeve, for its part, denounced through the voice of its spokesman Imed Khemiri “a staging” aimed at diverting attention from the political crisis.
Ennahdha also lent its support to its ex-president and former Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, arrested on Thursday on suspicion of money laundering.
The Interior Ministry said on Friday that the arrest of Mr. Jebali, who had resigned from Ennahdha in 2014, was linked to a case of transfer of large sums of money from abroad for the benefit of a charity.
“It’s a settling of scores aimed at political adversaries,” said Mr. Khemiri, the spokesman for Ennahdha.
According to him, Mr. Jebali started a hunger strike to denounce his “baseless” arrest.
Tunisia has been going through a deep political crisis since Mr. Saied’s coup on July 25, 2021. The president then suspended parliament and dismissed the government, shaking the fledgling democracy in the country, the cradle of the Arab Spring.
Mr Saied is under intense fire from the opposition for having excluded him from a national dialogue on a new constitution which he plans to submit to a referendum on July 25.
The opposition, including Ennahdha in particular, as well as human rights organizations, accuse him of seeking to have a text tailor-made for him adopted.
