UPDATED: Tunisia PM says will hand over responsibility to whomever the president chooses
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Update 0858: Dismissed Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi said he cannot be a disruptive element, and he will hand the responsibility to whomever the president chooses, in a step that may ease the North African country’s tough political crisis.. Mechichi added in statement that he is ready to serve Tunisia from any location.
Earlier:
Tunisian President Kais Saied rebutted accusations of carrying out a coup, calling on those who made such statements to “revise your constitutional lessons”.
Saied added that his decisions came in line with article no. 80 in the constitution.
Saied also called on Tunisians to remain calm and not to respond to any provocations asking them to take to the streets, saying “the most dangerous thing faced by countries and societies is internal explosion, internal fighting.”
Tunisia is facing the worst crisis in its decade of democracy on Monday after Saied sacked the government and suspended parliament with help from the army, a move denounced as a coup by the country’s main parties, including Islamists.
He extended some existing measures aimed at countering the pandemic, including a curfew and internal travel bans, but which would also have the effect of dampening street opposition.
Saied’s action followed months of deadlock and disputes pitting him against Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and a fragmented parliament as Tunisia descended into an economic crisis exacerbated by one of Africa’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks.
The crisis risks morphing into street confrontations as Saied’s critics, including Islamists repressed for decades under a previous autocracy, warned he was endangering the democratic system introduced after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
