Monday, February 07, 2011

Tunisia’s interim government moved Sunday to ban the country’s former ruling party after fresh weekend violence left three people dead during protests against the remnants of the old regime.

Interior Minister Fahrat Rajhi announced the suspension of ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Assembly as a first step toward its dissolution.

Rajhi, in a statement read out on national television, said the long-feared RCD was suspended from all political activity and that its offices throughout the country would be shut down.

“With the aim of preserving the supreme interest of the nation and to avoid any violation of the law, the minister of the interior has decided to suspend all the activities of the RCD, to ban all meetings or gatherings organized by its members and to shut offices belonging to this party or managed by it,” said the statement. Rajhi said the measures were taken “ahead of presenting an official request to the courts with a view to its dissolution.”

The announcement came hours after crowds pillaged, then burned a police station in the northwestern city of Kef a day after police shot dead at least two protesters. It was the worst violence in Tunisia since Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, ending 23 years in power.
Protests have also erupted in other corners of the country, which is being run by a caretaker government.

Authorities have been removing traces of the Ben Ali regime, notably eliminating figures connected with the former ruling party – but not fast enough for many citizens. Protests were held in several towns to protest the nomination of new governors belonging to the RCD.
The party’s activities were not just limited to politics.

Crowds attacked a police station in Kef Sunday, pillaging documents and equipment and setting it on fire, TAP reported. The army responded by encircling local government buildings to protect them, but tension was high.
Kef police officers fired Saturday at an angry crowd of 1,000 people attacking the police station with stones and firebombs, killing at least two people and injuring 17, the Interior Ministry has said. The crowd had tried to break into the station after the police chief “mishandled” a citizen, TAP said. Witnesses said the chief had slapped a woman.

The local police chief, Khaled Ghazouani, was placed under arrest, according to the ministry.

In Kebili, in the south, a youth hit by a tear gas canister was killed. He was among a group of demonstrators trying to attack a National Guard post to protest the appointment of a local governor, the news agency reported.

In the mining town of Gafsa in the center-west, the newly appointed governor, Mohammad Gouider, was forced to leave his new post in a military vehicle provided by the army amid a large protest by crowds demanding his departure and a “total rupture with the symbols of the old regime,” TAP reported.

Similar demonstrations were held in several other towns, from Sfax, the southern capital, to Bizerte, 60 kilometers north of Tunis.

Two opposition parties present in the interim government denounced the naming of regional governors without prior consultation and, for the Democratic Progressive Party, failing to assure a “climate of confidence between the administration and citizens.” The caretaker government is in its second life after being forced by protesters to drop key ministers long linked to the RCD.

Prime Minister Mohammad Ghannouchi, a longtime figure in the RCD, maintained his post but dropped his membership. The party’s executive bureau resigned.

In a sensitive weekend protest, hundreds of people took to the streets in the central-western town of Sidi Bouzid – where the uprising got its start in December.

Hundreds of people protested over the weekend after two inmates in a neighborhood police station were killed in a fire late Friday, TAP reported.

An investigation into the cause of the blaze was ordered, but Rajhi, the interior minister, speaking Saturday on the private Nessma TV station, left open the possibility that the fire was the work of “infiltrated persons” – a reference to the RCD.

Sidi Bouzid was the site of the start of Tunisia’s uprising, which unfolded with the Dec. 17 self-immolation attempt by an unemployed man whose fruit and vegetable cart was confiscated by police. – Agencies