Rached Ghannouchi, the influential leader of Tunisia’s moderate Islamist Ennahda party, is to stand in the next parliamentary elections in October, a move widely seen as an attempt to seek a leadership position in the country.
Exiled in London for about two decades during the time of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Ghannouchi has been a major force since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, but he has never run for any official position.
The 78-year-old remains a dominant figure who critics say effectively controls the country in tandem with secular-minded Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, 92. They are often dubbed the “two sheikhs” in reference to their age.
“The decision to present Ghannouchi at the top of the party’s electoral list in Tunis, is to have leaders of parties play a more important role at this crucial stage in the history of the democratic transition in Tunisia,” Ennahda party official Imed Khmiri said.
Ghannouchi’s candidacy for a parliamentary seat reinforces expectations that he is seeking to play a bigger role, possibly as prime minister or speaker of parliament, if his party wins the election.
Parliamentary elections are expected to be held on Oct. 6 with a presidential vote on Nov. 17.
They are to be the third set of polls in which Tunisians can vote freely following the 2011 revolution.
The parliamentary race is expected to be fought closely by the Ennahda party; the secular Tahya Tounes party of Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed; the Nidaa Tounes party led by Hafedh Caid Essebsi, the president’s son; and the Courant Democrate party.
Tunisia has been hailed as the only democratic success of the Arab Spring uprisings, but unemployment still stands at about 15 percent, due to weak growth and low investment.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS