In its latest electronic edition, the “Nouvel Observateur,” refers to “an institutional coup d’etat.” What has been prepared, since October 23, 2011, behind the scenes of the Constituent Assembly and corridors of the triumvirate’s seats, closely resembles to a takeover by force … democratic laws that allowed the three heads of the triumvirate to seize power.
Just like the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria, Hamadi Jbali of Ennahdha, Moncef Marzouki of CPR and Mustapha Ben Jaafar of Ettakattol have gained access to the three highest offices of the Tunisian government through the democratic game. It is also by using the same democracy, which no one can refute, that the three parties currently in power in Tunisia will have all the powers and will establish the autocracy or the dictatorship of the majority, though simple it is.
Ennahdha will do what it wants, even alone, in the new Constitution.
Indeed, reading the proposed power-sharing draft presented by the Ennahdha to the commission on the organization of provisional authorities, the first thing that comes to mind is the tailored organization. It will certainly last only for a year, but with a big question when we remember the double standards of Ennahdha despite the presence of Samir Dilou, a firefighter and when we hear Ameur Laaridh speak, as he did last Monday on the Tunisian National TV, of a year and a half at least.
From Article 3 of this project, we see that the Constituent Assembly has no power over the government that is in the hands of Ennahdha. According to the Article, “the Constituent Assembly is tasked with writing a new Constitution, the exercise of the legislative power and, the election of the President and his removal, if necessary.” This new assembly has no power to dismiss the government, but only to control the government’s action.
In Article 5, the new constitution is voted article by article, at first reading, by an absolute majority, and then all voted in second reading, by two-thirds majority. It is further stated that in case of failure of the majority of 2 / 3, it can be passed by an absolute majority.
This means, according to those who are against this mode, that in case of divergence, the draft constitution will be passed still as wished by Ennahdha which has in itself an absolute majority of the members of the Constituent Assembly. Ennahdha will then do what it wants to and can ignore all those who do not share its views.
Marzouki powerless and Jbali omnipotent!
In front of a “puppet” President of the Republic as imagined by Ennahdha in the proposed organization of the provisional authorities and who is to merely rubber stamp the will of the prime minister (the Constituent Assembly, for example, will have even the right to pass all that the head of state would not sign, and for the rest, he will always seek the agreement of the prime minister). And if this president was no longer suitable to the government, Marzouki can always be removed from office by the Constituent Assembly. All this, if we do not retain the street gossip that he will be flanked by a spokesman from another party of the triumvirate and probably Ennahdha, to keep him under control.
Facing a Marzouki, replaceable at will, there will be Hamadi Jbali, Rached Ghannouchi’s lieutenant and a man coming out of a 10-year imprisonment in a dark cell to assume the highest duties of the management of state affairs. The bill organizing the provisional authorities is planning to give him all the powers, the most absolute powers. And unlike Marzouki who was not allowed any accumulation between his duty as President of the Republic and that of member of the Constituent Assembly, there will be Hamadi Jbali for whom the draft already allows violating the law which has established the same constituent assembly, allowing him to accumulate his duty remunerated by the State to the Prime Minister and his function as elected member of the Constituent Assembly, contrary to Article 19 of the Legislative Decree of May 10, 2011, concerning the election of the Constituent Assembly.
Ali Laaridh well said, Monday night, on TV that “the Constitution is supreme.” Ennahdha can thus break the law and why not all the laws it wants. Hence, the door is open to all infringements.
Hamadi Jbali will not be Prime Minister but rather Head of government with the power to create and remove ministries, state secretariats, cabinet offices, businesses and public institutions and to determine their powers. A real Louis XIV who had said that “the state is me.”He will also have the power to appoint [or rather offer his own ministers] officials to senior positions, including CEO [I bet he is going to put his own]. Like Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had put him in prison, Hammadi Jbali grants himself, according to this draft which is certainly still under discussion and disagreement, all the powers of all the national and regional machinery of the State, businesses and public institutions, including security and public order.
Control of public finances?
Hamadi Jbali intends to do more and even better than Ben Ali. In the worst moments of his dictatorship and his hegemonic powers that led the Tunisian government to the state which Ennahdha inherited, Ben Ali had not dared to question the independence of the financial institution, one that is called “the guardian of the temple,” the institution of financial institutions, the regulator and controller of the entire financial sector, the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT).The draft of the organization of the provisional authorities is proposing, in effect, to grant Hamadi Jbali, the new Ben Ali of post-Ben Ali’s Tunisia, the power to appoint the Governor of the BCT, thus making the Governor of BCT the agent of a governmental department and an officer enforcing the financial wishes of the Jbali’s government, stripping him accordingly of all independence and putting, at the same time, the entire financial sector under the control of the government. A first in the annals of democracy, even the third world and all in the name and through democracy!
Before finishing, reference need to be made to the statement made, on Monday night at the Tunisian National TV, of Ali Laaridh Ali, who already launched the idea of the organization of municipal elections in 2012 even before the next parliamentary and presidential elections.
Ennahdha had taken Tunisia from the top, now it wants to take it from the bottom. Would the Tunisian Islamist party attempt to take root in regions and localities, before being forced to resign after the Constituent Assembly?
What is the opposition doing in the face of this and in front of this illegal and indecent draft? For now, nothing and the Code of Silence continues and even from those of El Kasbah 1 and 2 and so on. According to several sources reported by “Businessnews,” votes for Articles 5 (vote of the Constitution) and 8 (a section that gives the right to the Constituent Assembly to give the judiciary to Jbali) of the law on the provisional authorities announced the defeat of Ennahdha. But this could well be only fiction. The games and challenges have already been made in the agreement signed by the triumvirate and on which no body and especially the people, who put their fate and their future in the hands of these three parties, know nothing. Why do these parties have not issued this document so that Tunisia would know which fate awaits it from Ennahdha and its associates?
