2023-04-18 15:45:05
Published on :
Undisputed master of the political game in Tunisia for a decade, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamo-conservative Ennahda party, was arrested Monday evening after critical remarks against the government of Kaïs Saïed. In the process, the offices of the opposition party were closed Tuesday throughout the country. At 81, this divisive personality is the ideal scapegoat for a beleaguered power.
He is the most prominent opponent arrested in recent months in Tunisia. Regularly summoned by the courts in cases of “money laundering” or “terrorism”, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamo-conservative Ennahda party, was arrested on Monday April 17 at his home near Tunis.
The former President of the National Assembly, ousted from his post after President Kaïs Saïed’s coup in July 2021 and the dissolution of Parliament, is targeted after a speech given on April 15 in which he warned against “a civil war” in the event of the marginalization of political Islam, the movement from which his party originated.
An early Islamist figure pursued by the power of President Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987), Rached Ghannouchi created a political party in the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s. Then forced into exile in London for more than 20 years, however, he retains the presidency of Ennhada (“Renaissance”), a formation then banned in Tunisia.
On January 30, 2011, fifteen days after the fall of President Ben Ali, he made his grand return to the country, welcomed by thousands of supporters who saw him as the man for the job to lead the democratic transition.
“A Power Madman”
In a few months, Ennahda rises to the top. The party won 89 seats out of 217 in the constituent elections of October 2011, the first democratic ballot in Tunisia. At its head, Rached Ghannouchi, a past master in the art of compromise, knows how to make himself essential for a decade on the Tunisian political scene, even if it means forging alliances of circumstances, even against nature.
For example in 2014, when he governed hand in hand with the secular party Nidaa Tounes of the late President Beji Caïd Essebsi or in 2019, when he became president of the National Assembly thanks to an agreement with the liberal party Qalb Tounes.
“Ghannouchi is a madman of power, a fine politician and clearly someone very intelligent who knew how to compromise, to move forward when necessary and to step back at the right time,” analyzes Pierre Vermeren, professor of contemporary history of Arab societies. -Berbers in Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. “He saw himself as a kind of Tunisian Erdogan with the objective of making the country an Islamic Republic,” adds the specialist in Tunisian politics, referring to the Turkish president.
Anti-parliamentary rhetoric
Today, many Tunisians feel that the promises of the 2011 Revolution have not been kept. While the country is sinking into a deep institutional and economic crisis, a large part of public opinion considers Rached Ghannouchi and Ennahda responsible for the current situation.
“The Islamists have lost a large part of their popularity in the country for lack of having conducted a real economic and social policy”, recalls the sociologist Vincent Geisser, researcher at the CNRS. For a majority of Tunisians, Rached Ghannouchi is the “number 1 cause of the failure of the democratic transition”, abounds Pierre Vermeren. “He therefore makes an ideal scapegoat for President Saied.”
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By targeting Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunisian president thus attacks a divisive personality and “a symbol of the parliamentary regime that he absolutely wants to see disappear. A symbol also of corruption and of the elites who would have worked to weaken Tunisian sovereignty “, analyzes Vincent Geisser.
Rached Ghannouchi has been the subject of an investigation since June for suspicions of corruption and money laundering linked to transfers from abroad to the charity organization Namaa Tunisie, affiliated with Ennahda.
The president’s “best adversary”
According to experts, Rached Ghannouchi appears to be the best enemy of the Tunisian president, whose traditional and conservative values he shares. “Rached Ghannouchi supported Kaïs Saïed’s campaign in 2019, initially thinking he could manipulate him. But the latter, once in power, finally broke with him and made him his best opponent”, recalls Pierre Vermeren.
Like the entire opposition, Rached Ghannouchi and Ennahda also seem very weakened not only because of the repression carried out by the Tunisian government but also because of a deep internal crisis. Lacking funding, the party has been losing leaders, activists and voters for several years. “Rached Ghannouchi is quite alone today, international support has frayed, Tunisian public opinion has also changed a lot”, assures Pierre Vermeren who evokes a collapse of the political scene in the country.
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“With the arrest of Rached Ghannouchi, Kaïs Saïed thus wants to strike a blow at a party which is already experiencing an internal crisis but which embarrasses it because it remains well established territorially”, continues Vincent Geisser.
The day after the arrest of Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunisian authorities closed the offices of the Ennahdha movement throughout the country, a party official said on Tuesday.
This repression is part of an authoritarian and repressive turn of the Kaïs Saïed regime. Since February 2023, around fifteen opposition figures have been placed in pre-trial detention, including ex-ministers, businessmen and the boss of the country’s most listened to radio station, Mosaïque FM.
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