Saturday, January 22, 2011

Street pressure mounts on Tunisia PM to go

Protesters who overthrew Tunisia's president took to the streets again on Saturday to accuse his lieutenants of clinging to power and to demand new leaders now.

Hundreds broke through a half-hearted police cordon at the office of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi: "No place for men of tyranny in a national unity government," read one banner.

Ghannouchi, who stayed on to head a would-be unity coalition when strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled a week ago, made an emotional late-night plea for patience on television on Friday. He portrayed himself as a fellow victim and pledged to end his political career as soon as he could organize elections.

But as he held meetings with cabinet colleagues on Saturday, thousands of people on the streets of Tunis and other towns demonstrated their rejection of what many call his token attempt to co-opt a handful of little-known dissidents into government.

One demonstrator outside the premier's office said: "We want to tell Mr Ghannouchi the definition of 'revolution' -- it means a radical change, not keeping on the same prime minister."

Even policemen, once the feared blunt instrument of Ben Ali's 24-year rule, were declaring changed loyalties -- in Tunis thousands joined in chant of "We are innocent of the blood of the martyrs!" at a rally to show their support for the "Jasmine Revolution," in which police bullets and batons killed dozens.

It was police harassment of a young vegetable seller last month that prompted him to burn himself to death in protest at unemployment and corrupt rule, triggering the wave of unrest.

Such problems are common across the Arab world and the region's authoritarian leaders, many supported by Western powers as bulwarks against radical Islam, are watching the small North African state anxiously. Tunisia's formal opposition groups are tiny. Long-banned Islamists may soon play a bigger role.

Clearly under pressure, Ghannouchi said on television late on Friday: "I lived like Tunisians and I feared like Tunisians."

He went on: "I pledge to stop all my political activity after my period leading the transitional government."

The response of the street protesters, who have electrified oppressed and impoverished Arabs from the Atlantic to the Gulf, was scornful: "Since 1990, Ghannouchi has been finance minister, then prime minister," said student Firass Hermassi outside Ghannouchi's office. "He knows everything, he's an accomplice."

Another protester, Habib Dridi, said Ghannouchi was "too late" in making apologies and distancing himself from a system he served at cabinet level for 20 years: "We need people with a new mentality. People with dirty hands cannot implement a clean program," he said. "He needs to apologize and withdraw."

Former leaders of Ben Ali's ruling party, the RCD, have retained high profile ministries such as interior and foreign affairs in Ghannouchi's makeshift unity coalition. Dissident politicians brought into government were given less influential posts such as higher education and regional development.

Five ministers have already quit the interim government, including one opponent of Ben Ali and three representatives of Tunisia's big trade union, a key player in the revolt.

After 55 years of stifling one-man rule since independence from France, Tunisians, let alone those outside, have little clear idea which leaders they would choose in a free vote.

A lack of a visible Islamist presence in Tunisia, which is fairly prosperous compared to some Arab states, may be partly due to severe repression of Islamist expression under Ben Ali.

Salah Jourchi, a Tunisian expert on Islamist movements, said: "The Islamist movement was the most oppressed of all the opposition movements under Ben Ali. Its followers are also much greater in number than those of the secular opposition."

Much attention is on Rached Ghannouchi, exiled leader of the banned Islamist Ennahda, or Renaissance, movement which by some estimates may have won as much as a third of the vote in an election in 1989 whose results Ben Ali chose to ignore.

Ghannouchi, who is not related to the prime minister of that name, told Al-Jazeera Saturday that his movement supported the democratic trend and should not be feared: "We are a moderate Islamic movement, a democratic movement based on democratic ideals in ... Islamic culture," he said.

He called those who sympathies with the anti-democratic ideas of al Qaeda and others "extremist" and wrong-headed in their understanding of Islam. Referring to Iran's revolutionary Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he said: "I am no Khomeini."

Clearly under pressure, Prime Minister Ghannouchi said on television late on Friday: "I lived like Tunisians and I feared like Tunisians." He added: "I pledge to stop all my political activity after my period leading the transitional government."

The response of the street protesters, who have electrified oppressed and impoverished Arabs from the Atlantic to the Gulf, was scornful: "Since 1990, Ghannouchi has been finance minister, then prime minister," said student Firass Hermassi outside Ghannouchi's office. "He knows everything, he's an accomplice."

It is unclear when elections for president and parliament might be held. Leaders of opposition groups say they may need six months to get Tunisians simply to know who they are.