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Tunisian Leaders Quit Ruling Party

20 January 2011 17:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. In Tunisiaâ€™s continuing tumult, security forces fired warning shots in the air on Thursday as protesters paraded outside the headquarters of the former ruling party demanding that the country break decisively with the symbols and structures of its past under Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the ousted president, APA reports quoting The New York Times.
The protests seemed to be taking their toll.
State television said all eight ministers in Tunisiaâ€™s interim unity government who had previously been linked to Mr. Ben Aliâ€™s party had resigned. Later, the broadcaster reported that the partyâ€™s once-powerful central committee had been dissolved because many of its members who were in the new government had quit. Mr. Ben Ali fled into exile in Saudi Arabia last week, ending 23 years of increasingly autocratic rule.
Several hundred largely peaceful demonstrators, including some with children and some women wearing Islamic headgear, paraded past the Interior Ministry and the deserted-looking headquarters of Mr. Ben Aliâ€™s former party, the Democratic Constitutional Rally.
The high-rise, glass-flanked building soars over central Tunis, but its parking lot was occupied Thursday only by soldiers backed by armored vehicles mounted with machine guns. At one point, reflecting a widespread clamor to be rid of the symbols of Mr. Ben Aliâ€™s rule, the crowd surged toward a high padlocked gate demanding that the partyâ€™s sign be torn from the building.
But an army officer, who did not identify himself to the demonstrators, told them through a bull horn: â€œThis building does not belong to the party. It belongs to the people.â€
The protesters chanted, â€œBetter bread and water than the R.D.C.,â€ using the partyâ€™s initials.
As the demonstration continued, Reuters said, police officers fired shots into the air to try to disperse the protesters, but they refused to give ground. Other reports said the army opened fire into the air as the numbers swelled and protesters tore down the party emblem from the building.
Opposition to the old guard also seemed to be spreading far from the capital.
In the town of Gafsa, about 200 miles south of Tunis, 3,000 to 4,000 people gathered to demand the ouster of ministers who worked with Mr. Ben Ali, and state television said another antigovernment protest erupted in Kef, 110 miles southwest of the capital, Reuters reported. Both sides of the unity government â€” the new minority from the ranks of Tunisiaâ€™s tiny legal opposition parties and the leaders from the old ruling party â€” seem now to be responding to popular anger that so many of the same faces remained in influential posts in the government even though Mr. Ben Ali has fled.
In a televised address on Wednesday, the interim president, Fouad Mebazaa, the speaker of Parliament and a longtime stalwart of the ruling party, hailed the â€œrevolutionâ€ and declared, â€œWe want a clean break with the past.â€
State television reported the arrest for â€œcrimes against Tunisiaâ€ of 33 members of Mr. Ben Aliâ€™s family, many of whom grew rich from their connections.
The government also said its prosecutors had opened an investigation into the familyâ€™s overseas assets, while the Swiss government moved to freeze their assets in Swiss banks. The prime minister declared that 1,800 political prisoners had been released from jail, and said that others with sentences of less than six months would also be freed.
Opposition leaders, meanwhile, portrayed the new government as walking a tightrope, balancing the publicâ€™s demand for a purge of the old ruling party against their fears of a government collapse that could invite a military takeover. â€œWe are walking on eggs,â€ said Ahmed Bouazzi, a member of the executive committee of the Progressive Democratic Party, the largest and most credible legal opposition group.
And all concerned feel the eyes of the region on them: In the shabby and disordered headquarters of the Progressive Democrats, young men were debating whether Egypt would soon rise up like Tunisia, if its fledgling revolution survived.
At a meeting in Sharm el Sheik, Amr Moussa, the Egyptian head of the Arab League and a popular figure in his home country often considered a potential challenger to its authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned, â€œThe Arab citizen has entered a stage of anger that is unprecedented.â€
More people in North African autocracies tried to burn themselves like the vegetable seller whose self-immolation kicked off the Tunisian revolt, bringing the total as of Wednesday to 11 â€” 8 in Algeria, 2 in Egypt and 1 in Mauritania. At least one, an Egyptian who set himself on fire in Alexandria, has died.
Mr. Bouazzi of the Progressive Democratic Party, which has only about a thousand members, said that after decades under Mr. Ben Aliâ€™s one-party rule, the opposition had miscalculated in settling for only relatively minor positions in the unity government.
â€œWe â€” I personally â€” did not realize the balance of forces, that the ruling party was so weak as a partyâ€ when the prime minister called about forming a unity government, Mr. Bouazzi said. â€œIf it was now, we would say, â€˜No, you should fire this one and this one and this one, and give us that one,â€™ â€ he said before an internal party meeting to prepare demands for the first cabinet session on Thursday.
For now, the government owes its tenuous grip on stability to Gen. Rashid Ammar, who is believed to have prompted the end of Mr. Ben Aliâ€™s rule by refusing an order to fire at demonstrators. â€œHe is controlling the country, the heavy weapons,â€ Mr. Bouazzi said.
There were signs on Wednesday that the new government was beginning to achieve a measure of stability. The capitalâ€™s main Avenue Bourguiba was clear of tear gas for the first day in more than a week. No gunshots rang out. Cafes reopened. The government pushed the curfew back from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Hundreds of protesters once again poured into the streets by 11 a.m., demanding the elimination of any ties to the old ruling party. â€œWe want to eradicate all of the people who participated in the hierarchical pyramids of this tyrannical regime,â€ said Ahmed Khalil Rais, a graduate student. â€œThey have to resign â€” all the people with blood on their hands.â€
Others in the crowd debated the return of the banned Islamic political party. Several said they welcomed or even cheered its revival, but all insisted that any Islamist political movement must be distinctively Tunisian, predicated on democracy, pluralism and womenâ€™s rights.