From The International Herald Tribune: Tunisian describes mediation bid in Egyptian unrest BY CARLOTTA GALL TUNIS — In the tense days before the military took power in Egypt, the leader of Tunisia’s dominant party says, he tried to mediate between President Mohamed Morsi and his opponents in a last-ditch effort to salvage the region’s most important test of whether Islamist instincts could be reconciled with democracy. Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the party, Ennahda, or Renaissance, acknowledged in an interview this past week that the effort at mediation failed spectacularly. The confrontation on Egypt’s streets now endangers the whole region, he said. Since then, Mr. Ghannouchi has found the coalition government led by Ennahda also imperiled by a series of shocks following the assassination in July of a liberal opposition leader and an ambush by militants that killed eight soldiers. Opposition groups have rallied daily demanding the resignation of the government, just a year and half in power, and accuse the government of giving too much latitude to extremists. ‘‘In Tunis there was an attempt at imitating or recreating the Egyptian scenario,’’ Mr. Ghannouchi said Wednesday at his party’s headquarters in Tunis. ‘‘I think this has failed and we are now, I hope, approaching the end of the crisis.’’ That remains to be seen. It is as precarious a time as nearly any since the start of the Arab Spring for the efforts to show that religious parties can create stable and competent governments. The Egyptian military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi and its widening crackdown on his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood — a kindred movement to Mr. Ghannouchi’s own — was a jarring setback for Islamic parties who view it as a conspiracy by the army, which duped the opposition parties. Libya has continued to deteriorate, its ungoverned areas becoming a playground for extremists. In Tunisia, the assassination in July of the opposition leader Mohamed Brahmi sent thousands into the streets, shaking the government and Ennahda’s grip on power as its popular support has eroded while the economy declines security worsens. Still, Mr. Ghannouchi remains optimistic, betraying, perhaps, the patience of a 72-year-old man twice imprisoned under the old regime, who spent 22 years in exile before returning to Tunisia in 2011, and who has worked for the ideal of political Islam since founding the Islamic Tendency Movement in the 1980s. ‘‘The main idea that we have is a democratic government that is based on consensus, and that brings together the moderate Islamists and the moderate secularists,’’ he said. ‘‘This is the main characteristic of the Tunis experience, or if you want to call it, model, and I don’t think what happened will bring this experiment to an end.’’ As the region’s lonely flag-bearers seek to show that Islamists can govern democratically and inclusively, he and his party can hardly afford despair. Instead, Mr. Ghannouchi — a renowned Islamic thinker, and an alumnus of Cairo and Damascus Universities — chose to highlight several key differences between events in Egypt and Tunisia, which, he said, may yet serve as an example for the broader region. The main one, he noted, was that his party, which won elections in 2011, had chosen to work in a coalition government with secular parties and sought a consensus in drafting a new Constitution and legal framework for elections. Tunisia was still searching for its identity, and Ennahda’s 51 percent majority was not enough for it to be able to govern alone, nor was a two-thirds majority enough to pass the Constitution, he told a discussion forum here last week. ‘‘That’s why we need a consensus.’’ In the interview he said it did not matter that there was no mention of Shariah law or an Islamic state in the Constitution, something Egypt’s Islamists had insisted on. Ennahda has settled for a lighter wording that Islam is the religion of the country. ‘‘The values of justice, liberty and equality are Islamic values and they are in the Constitution,’’ he said. Even since the turmoil set off by the assassination of Mr. Brahmi last month, a majority of Tunisians have chosen not to join the protests, he noted, since they knew that to dismiss the government and the elected National Constituent Assembly was a recipe for chaos. ‘‘If anyone wants to topple the government, they do not have to wait years,’’ he said. ‘‘They only have to wait a few months and they will have the chance to topple this government democratically though the ballot box.’’ In the face of renewed pressure since the assassination, Mr. Ghannouchi said he was ready to offer more concessions. ‘‘We are open to discussing all ideas that are presented in the political arena,’’ he said. The government has announced a timetable to pass the Constitution by the end of August and set elections for Dec. 17. Ennahda would drop all remaining objections on the Constitution and would consider all proposals for changes in the administration, including even cabinet ministers and regional governors, Mr. Ghannouchi said. Beside the prime minister, only five of the 24 cabinet ministers were Ennahda members anyway, he pointed out. He said the only red line was a refusal to dissolve the Constituent Assembly because it was the only elected body in the country that represented the will of the people. Mr. Ghannouchi and his party are facing criticism from two sides. Its own supporters are disappointed that Ennahda has failed to meet its promises to introduce an Islamist system and complain that it has been too lenient on its opponents and members of the former regime. Opposition parties said Ennahda had reneged on previous offers to compromise and was playing games to prolong its period in power. ‘‘The government has no credit at all,’’ Beji Caid Essebsi, a former prime minister and leader of the largest opposition bloc, said in an interview. ‘‘They say anything they like and the people don’t believe them anymore.’’ In addition, he charged, Ennahda has fostered gangs that use violence against its political opponents. Mr. Ghannouchi was nonplussed, attributing the turbulence to what he described as Tunisia’s ‘‘post-revolutionary phase.’’ ‘‘In these phases you find some forces want to take us back to the pre-revolution phase,’’ he said in Arabic, as his son, Moadh, his chief of staff, translated into English, ‘‘and also you find the emergence of radical groups both on the right and the left,’’ which he blamed for the latest assassination. Accusations connecting such radicals to his party or its supporters lacked credibility, he said. There is no doubt that Mr. Morsi’s ouster was a severe blow for Mr. Ghannouchi, who was attending a conference in Cairo at the beginning of June with a delegation of Ennahda members. He said he carried the demands of Hamdeen Sabahi, one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front, the main opposition bloc, to the president, trying to help Mr. Morsi thread a course that would save his administration. Mr. Morsi agreed to virtually all of them, a member of the delegation said. ‘‘We found they were willing to change the government and even have a technocratic government and they were even willing to draft a consensual electoral law, and we advised them that they must be flexible,’’ said Ameur Larayedh, the chief of Mr. Ghannouchi’s political bureau, who was present at the negotiations. ‘‘But things escalated and reached a confrontation.’’ Mr. Ghannouchi said he shared the desire of Western countries to work together to find a way out of the crisis, as far gone as it seemed. Mr. Morsi could be released and returned to a purely symbolic position of president with an independent prime minister or caretaker government to oversee preparations for new elections, he suggested, while the military could be given guarantees that they would not be prosecuted for recent events. Mr. Ghannouchi said he could restart the dialogue. ‘‘We need measures that calm down the situation — the release of political prisoners, and to stop the pursuit of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership and the media attacks from both sides,’’ he said. ◼ Get the best global news and analysis direct to your device – download the IHT apps for free today! For iPad: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404757420?mt=8 For iPhone: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404764212?mt=8
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 08:02:09 +0000
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