Politics

Tunisia-Rached Ghannouchi: “We missed the opportunity to end the putsch”

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)

Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, spoke on Monday, August 1 with Al-Quds Al-Arabi and returned to the events of July 25, 2021, revealing that “Tunisians missed, on that day, the “opportunity to end the coup d’etat undertaken by Kais Saied”. “The Nahdhawis missed the opportunity to put an end the putsch as the Turks did in the coup attempt against Recep Erdogan in 2016,” he said.

“We assembled in front of Parliament on the night of July 25 to 26, 2021, though only a few hundred people were able to join us (…) during this time more than 150 premises belonging to Ennahdha had then been burned down and the Nahdhaouis were occupied putting down the fires,” he said.

“To those who were able to join us later, I notified them that they had missed the opportunity to stifle the putsch like the Turks in 2016,” he added. Rached Ghannouchi remembers that on July 25, 2021 Ennahdha was almost isolated but had “at its side” the Workers’ Party, which dared from the first moments to qualify the measures announced by Kais Saied as a coup d’etat.

“But today, it is Kais Saied who is isolated when three-quarters of the Tunisian people did not reply to his call by voting in the referendum, not to cite the most important parties, who all took a position refusing the referendum and the new constitution,” he said. He further clarifies that “on July 25, 2021, Kais Said’s popularity reached 90%… Today, it has dropped to around 20% in just one year. The reason is that he has done nothing in this year other than tearing down the institutions of the state.”