Politics

Tunisia-Nesrine Laâméri:Rached Ghannouchi asked to replace his chief of staff after hiding of correspondence from Tobruk parliament

Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Tunisian Islamist Ennahda party, checks his ballot behind a booth at a polling station in Ben Arous near the capital Tunis on May 6, 2018, as the country votes in the first free municipal elections since the 2011 revolution. - Tunisians head to the polls on May 6 in what is seen as another milestone on the road to democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring, despite muted interest in the poll as struggles with corruption and poverty continue. Though parliamentary and presidential votes have taken place since the fall of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, municipal polls have been delayed four times due to logistic, administrative and political deadlocks. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)

Members of the Bureau of the House of People’s Representatives (HPR) have asked Speaker Rached Ghannouchi to replace his chief of staff Habib Khedher, said HPR bureau chairman’s assessor for information and communication, Nesrine Laamari.

According to the TAP agency, She explained that this request comes as a result of Habib Khedher’s attempts to set up “an administration parallel to the parliament’s office and to hinder the smooth running of its work”. According to these deputies, Khedher hid a correspondence addressed to HPR in January 2020 by the East Libyan parliament, based in Tobruk.

Nesrine Laamari, of the parliamentary group of “National Reform” (16 deputies), said Saturday in a statement to TAP that this correspondence includes a request by the Committee on Foreign Relations and International Cooperation in the Tobruk parliament to hold a working session with the Committee on Rights, Freedoms and External Relations of the Tunisian parliament.

The existence of the correspondence was discovered last week through statements made to the press by the chairman of the Libyan Foreign Relations Committee, Youssef Agouri, she said.

“Such behaviour will not help to build trust between the members of the parliament’s bureau and the administrative body of the speaker of parliament,” she said, adding that the Reform bloc “is seriously considering withdrawing the trust from Rached Ghannouchi”.

“Hiding information of this importance from the members of the HPR bureau and committee chairpersons is of the utmost importance and cannot be ignored,” she said, adding that despite Khedher’s apologies, this does not exclude the possibility that other information has been withheld or will be withheld in the future.

For Laameri, this reflects a bias for one of the protagonists in the Libyan conflict.