TUNIS - Tunisia's Islamist prime minister resigned Thursday, ending the two-year-old rule of his party, which has dominated the political scene since the popular uprising here that initiated the Arab Spring.
The departing prime minister, Ali Larayedh of the Ennahda Party, handed power to a caretaker government that will oversee elections later in the year.
The resignation of the Ennahda government is a setback for the Islamists who wanted to lead the country into elections, but is part of a carefully calibrated political agreement with opposition parties to break months of deadlock. Members of the National Constituent Assembly had been stalling proceedings and demanding the resignation of the government since the assassination of a secular politician, Mohammad Brahmi, last July. It was the second assassination in six months, and opposition groups blamed Mr. Larayedh for what they called his laxity toward Islamist extremist threats.
Under an agreement mediated by the main labor union, political parties settled on an interim prime minister, Mehdi Jomaa, an independent figure who is the current minister of industry, last month. That ended the impasse, and the assembly has resumed work to complete outstanding business, namely to ratify the constitution, nominate the electoral board and prepare an electoral law.
Mr. Larayedh handed his resignation to President Moncef Marzouki on Thursday afternoon, hours after the assembly had voted in members of the new independent election board. The interim prime minister, Mr. Jomaa, was expected to present his cabinet on Friday. Mr. Larayedh told journalists at the presidential palace that he would continue to manage the country's affairs until the new prime minister had formed his government and the constitution had been ratified.
'A while ago I promised to resign when the country was on a clear track, when there was a modern constitution and an independent board of elections, which we hope will be held soon, and a new government agreed by consensus to prepare for the elections,' he said at a brief news conference. 'This was our goal in the national dialogue so that Tunisians can find an exit that avoids internal conflict.'
Mr. Larayedh said he hoped Tunisia's experience would serve as a model of democratic transition for others.
One of Tunisia's most prominent former political prisoners, Mr. Larayedh, 58, is a founding member of Ennahda, or Renaissance, the country's main Islamist movement. He was repeatedly imprisoned and tortured for his political activism when Tunisia was ruled by a dictatorial president, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.
With a degree in maritime engineering, Mr. Larayedh spent much of his adult life underground in political activism, teaching in private schools to earn a living. He was arrested in 1990 and served 14 consecutive years in prison, many of them in solitary confinement.
After the revolution that overthrew Mr. Ben Ali, Ennahda won national elections in October 2011 and formed a coalition interim government. Mr. Larayedh was appointed interior minister in December 2011 and became prime minister in February 2013. He was criticized for failing to curb violence committed by extremist Islamists, including an attack on the American Embassy in September 2012 and the assassination of a prominent leftist politician, Chokri Belaid, in February 2013.
He is stepping down at a time of growing social unrest amid worsening security and economic difficulties. Violent demonstrations have broken out around the country to protest high unemployment and a new finance law that has raised taxes on goods and transportation. Mr. Larayedh announced that the government was abrogating that law hours before he submitted his resignation.
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, January 9, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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