Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – Tunisia’s largest political party, the centrist Islamist Ennahda party, had 113 of its members resign amid a dire political crisis. Ennahda was the largest party in Tunisia’s parliament before President Kais Saied disbanded parliament amid an ongoing centralization of power around his presidency.
The 113 resignations from Ennahda occurred in the early hours of Saturday, September 25, when the party’s detractors published a letter announcing the mass resignation, followed by an exhaustive list of the members resigning.
The letter, published in Tunisian outlet Tunisie Numerique and other Tunisian media, blamed the party’s leadership and its president Rached Ghannouchi, for Tunisia’s ongoing political crisis, and demanded for it to “assume a large part of the responsibility.”
It is likely the 113 departing members are seizing the moment amid the current political unrest to establish a new political party that can distance itself from the political baggage of the centrist Islamists.
Amid the ongoing political crisis in Tunisia, many have feared the collapse of Tunisia’s young, fragile democracy. On Friday, US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price called on President Saied to “appoint a prime minister to form a government” to address the country’s ongoing crises.
The US is not going as far as describing the President’s apparent power grab as a “coup” as many international observers have. Still, Price emphasized that the US does “echo calls from the Tunisian public for the president to articulate a plan with a clear timeline for an inclusive reform process that includes civil society and diverse political voices.”
Pro-democracy activists have announced a large-scale demonstration on Sunday, September 26, in the heart of the country’s capital Tunis. The protests intend to demand the reopening of parliament and a restoration of the democratic institutions that were established in Tunisia in 2011.
