Tunisia’s main opposition party, the Islamist Ennahda, on Sunday, rejected President Kais Saied’s decision to exclude political parties from drafting the country’s new constitution, reported Reuters.
President Saied took executive power last year and dissolved parliament to rule by decree. He has since said that he seeks to replace the democratic 2014 constitution with a new constitution via a July 25 referendum and hold new parliamentary elections in December.
On Friday, the Tunisian president named Sadik Belaid, a law professor, to head an advisory committee of legal and political science experts to draft the new constitution, excluding political parties from the process.
Belaid will be coordinating between two other advisory panels tasked with making proposals for drafting Tunisia’s new constitution. The two panels consist of deans of law and six national organizations, including the powerful UGTT Labor Union.
According to the decree, the two panels will prepare a constitution “that responds to the aspirations of the people and guarantees the principles of justice and freedom in a true democratic system.”
The official gazette said that the advisory committee will submit its report on June 20 to President Saied.
The National Salvation Front, a coalition of several parties and activist groups including Ennahda, Heart of Tunisia, Karama, and the Citizens Against the Coup coalition, decried the move as another dangerous step towards entrenching one-man rule.
Saied denies the accusations that he staged a coup to seize power. He claims that his intervention was legal and necessary to save Tunisia from years of political paralysis and economic stagnation at the hands of the corrupt, self-serving elite who had taken control of the government.
The president has nonetheless attracted broad opposition across Tunisia’s political spectrum.
Ennahda called on Tunisia’s political parties to come together to restore democracy and save the country from the dangers of economic collapse.
