TUNIS (AFP)
Several Tunisian centrist parties including the centre-left PDP agreed Saturday to combine forces and gain more clout in a country increasingly challenged by Islamists ahead of general elections.
The PDP which has 16 seats in the 217-member Constituent Assembly, set up after the ouster of strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and the post-revolutionary liberal Afek Tounes party which has four will be the main forces of the new movement.
Its exact name and the make-up of its leadership will be announced in the eastern city of Sousse on Monday.
Five other small parties and a group of independent politicians were expected to join its ranks.
“We will create a new democratic, social, moderate, centrist party that will be built on justice,” PDP leader Maya Jribi said amid the cheers of hundreds at the opening of Saturday’s congress.
“We will make the battle against the scourge of unemployment, for equality and the respect of Tunisians’ fundamental rights… our programme,” said Jribi.
Admitting that her party had not done well in the October 23 elections to the Constituent Assembly, Jribi said the new party must “well prepare the next election” which is to be held within a year.
Jribi warned that Tunisians were “starting to have doubts and wondering where Tunisia is going”, referring to “threats by (Muslim) fundamentalists” and the general security situation.
Six months after the election and 100 days after the new government took over “there is no clear strategy, no promise has been kept, the revolution which called for jobs and dignity is threatened,” she added.
The congress took place as baton-wielding police fired teargas to disperse a demonstration by thousands of jobless Tunisian graduates in the capital.
Protesters chanted “Down with the government!” and “Work, freedom, dignity”, a slogan of the January 2011 revolution that toppled Ben Ali.
Police went on the offensive as the protesters tried to march on Tunis’s main thoroughfare Avenue Habib Bourguiba which has been the location of frequent protests since the uprising that ousted Ben Ali.
But a ban was imposed on March 28 following incidents during a demonstration demanding sharia law.
“Around 20 demonstrators were wounded when police charged,” said Belgacem Ben Abdallah, leader of the Union of Unemployed Graduates which called the protest.
“We came to demonstrate peacefully for jobs, freedom and dignity because nothing has changed since the revolution. The police behaved brutally just as in the days of Ben Ali,” he said.
The interior ministry said six police officers were injured during the protest by stone-throwing demonstrators.
Tunisia’s Human Rights League slammed police “brutality” and insisted that people had a right to demonstrate peacefully.
Abdallah said the protesters wanted jobs and unemployment benefit equal to the minimum Tunisian wage (about 150 euros/$195 a month). Unemployment stands at 19 percent in Tunisia, nearly a quarter of whom are graduates.
He accused the government led by the Islamist party Ennahda of “not keeping its promises” and “taking over the policy of Ben Ali” on employment.
The new Tunisian government’s job creation programme aims to create 25,000 posts in the public sector, far below the number deemed necessary.
Unemployment was a major factor in the Tunisian revolution which led to a series of uprisings called the Arab Spring and ultimately led also to the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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