Tunisians on Saturday stormed the streets of Tunis, the country’s capital in their numbers protesting against the power grab by President Kais Saied.
They also demanded accountability from the president on the lingering economic crisis ravaging the country, according to AFP correspondents.
Recall that Saied forcefully taken over power in July last year and later pushed through a constitution enshrining his one-man rule a move describes by many critics as a return to autocracy in the only democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring.
During the protest, the protesters in central Tunis could be heard chanting, “Down, down”, “Revolution against dictator Kais” and “The coup will fall.”
The organizers of the march included the National Salvation Front, a coalition of opposition parties such as the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha that had dominated Tunisia’s parliament before its dissolution by Saied.
According to Ali Laarayedh, Tunisia’s former prime minister and a senior Ennahdha official, told AFP that the protest was an expression of “anger at the state of affairs under Kais Saied”.
“We are telling him to leave.”
Although initially, Saied’s power grab was welcomed by some Tunisians tired of what they saw as a fractious and corrupt system established after the 2011 revolution that ousted late dictator Zine El Abidine Ali.
But a worsening economic situation, compounded by supply shortages in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, has agitated many in the North African country of 12 million.
Laarayedh added that, If Saied stays, “Tunisia will have no future,” citing growing despair, poverty and unemployment.
The National Salvation Front has announced it will boycott a December vote to elect a new parliament with limited powers.
Ennahdha’s deep ideological rival, the secular Free Destourian Party (PDL), also organised a protest in the capital on Saturday.
Saied “is doing nothing, and things are only getting worse”, said Souad, a pensioner in her 60s at the secular party’s demonstration.
Also, some of the protesters were siad to have carried empty containers to symbolise the rising cost of water due to inflation, which hit 9.1 percent in September.
Around 1,500 people joined the Ennahdha-led demonstration, while nearly 1,000 attended the PDL protest, the interior ministry told AFP.
Saied claimed he was working to “correct” economic troubles he had inherited from Tunisia’s post-Ben Ali leadership.
Meanwhile, Cash-strapped Tunisia is in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout loan of about $2 billion.
AFP