Thousands of people took to the streets of Tunisia on Saturday in a new mass protest against the country’s president, Kais Saied, who they accuse of having staged a self-coup after taking over the powers of Parliament, in a march commemorating the 12th anniversary of the Jasmine Revolution that overthrew former president Zine al Abidine Ben Ali.
Hours before the start of the protest marches, security forces have been deployed in all the main streets of the center of the homonymous capital, as reported by the correspondent of the pan-Arab media Al Arabiya.
Political parties and organizations issued communiqués on the occasion of the commemoration of January 14, in which they agreed to «continue the struggle» to embody the slogans raised during the events of the revolution, and to confront what they described as «President Saied’s path to circumvent democracy», according to a joint communiqué picked up by the official Tunisian news agency TAP.
In a gesture of defiance, Saied strolled on Friday evening along the capital’s main avenue, that of Habib Bourguiba, where he warned that «there is no place for traitors in the country», before declaring that «those who accuse Tunisia of being a dictatorship are the same ones who want to destroy it».
Less than 24 hours later, a wave of supporters of the National Salvation Front, an opposition coalition, gathered on this iconic avenue to call for Saied’s departure from power.
Some of them chanted, «the people want the fall of the regime,» a slogan reminiscent of the uprising that ended Ben Ali’s rule.
Opposition Workers’ Party leader Hamma Hammami also lashed out at Saied, «We are here in the street to send a message to Saied and tell him to leave. These people will bring you down like they brought down Ben Ali,» she declared in comments picked up by DPA.
Saied has since July 2021 pushed through a series of measures to reform Tunisia’s political system, including a constitutional referendum, approved amid opposition boycott, that strengthens the powers of the presidency. The opposition has denounced an authoritarian drift of the president and has demanded his resignation.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
