TUNIS — Tunisian President Kais Saied vowed Monday to
appoint a prime minister but said emergency measures that he announced in July
would remain in place.
اضافة اعلان
"These exceptional measures will continue and a prime
minister will be named but on the basis of transitional rulings responding to
the will of the people," he said in a televised speech from Sidi Bouzid,
the cradle of Tunisia's 2011 revolution.
On July 25, Saied sacked the government, suspended
parliament, removed lawmakers' immunity and put himself in charge of the
prosecution.
He has since renewed the measures for a second 30-day
period, and had not responded to calls for a roadmap for lifting them.
Saied has repeatedly insisted his actions are in line with
the North African country's post-revolution constitution, under which the head
of state can take "exceptional measures" in case of an "imminent
danger" to national security.
Speaking to a large crowd on Monday, Saied, a bitter
opponent of the country's parliamentary system, said the legislature had turned
into "a marketplace where votes are bought and sold".
"How can they be representatives of the people while
their votes in
parliament are bought and sold and sittings are paused so the
price can be agreed?" he asked.
The crowd repeatedly interrupted his speech with the shouts
of "the people want parliament to be dissolved."
National television station Watania, which broadcast the
speech live, repeatedly cut out and eventually promised to broadcast a recorded
version, prompting mockery online.
'Selling the country'
Saied, a political outsider, came to power in 2019 on a wave
of public outrage against political parties widely seen as corrupt and
self-serving.
Without naming his opponents, on Monday Saied accused
"traitors" of "selling the country".
"This is not an issue of a government but of an entire
system," he said.
He repeated three times: "Sovereignty belongs to the
people!"
Saied delivered his speech to a noisy crowd in front of Sidi
Bouzid's municipality where Mohamed Bouazizi, a vegetable salesman angered by
police harassment, set himself ablaze in December 2010.
Bouazizi's act triggered an unprecedented uprising that left
some 300 people dead and toppled long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,
sparking a string of revolts across the region.
Tunisia has won praise for its democratic transition but a
decade on, many Tunisians feel their quality of life has worsened in the face
of grinding economic, social and political crises, exacerbated by the
coronavirus pandemic.
Many Tunisians took to the streets on July 25 in support of
Saied's moves.
But rights groups have warned that measures including
military trials of some Saied opponents reflect a worrying trend towards
authoritarianism.
The measures have also received stinging criticism from his
arch-foe, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, which formed the largest bloc
in parliament before its dissolution by the president.
Several
hundred protesters, many of them Ennahdha
supporters, marched through central Tunis on Saturday to demand a return to
parliamentary democracy.
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