One hundred Ennahda members reject a third term for their leader
About a hundred members of the Tunisian Islamist party Ennahda on Tuesday urged its president, Rached Ghannouchi, not to run for another term after nearly three decades in office, the local press reported. According to an internal document that came out yesterday, an important sector of the party fears that the historic leader will change the internal regulations that prohibit a third term to run for re-election. The signatories, who include MPs, regional leaders and members of the Shoura council (the movement's governing body), are threatening to resign en bloc if the Shoura does not accept their demands.
The activists also demand that the next congress be held before the end of the year to elect a successor, which was initially scheduled for May and was postponed due to the political and health crisis in the country. In this connection, the text recalled that Ennahda has always fought against the dictatorship and will not accept a lifetime presidency among its ranks. They also accused the leader of being responsible for the wave of resignations of important figures from the movement in recent years, such as the vice-president and founding member, Abdelhamid Jelassi, and the secretary general, Zied Laadhari.
The internal struggle became more evident after the last legislative elections on 6 October when Ghannouchi changed 30 of the 33 heads of lists appointed by the regional authorities at the last minute in order to isolate his opponents and create a parliamentary group that was tailored to him. A strategy that earned him the label of "despot" among his party's opponents. Following Ennahda's election victory, Ghannouchi was elected president of parliament but, months later, several parliamentary groups filed a motion of censure against the leader, who was accused of violating the assembly's internal rules and of diplomatic interference in the Libyan conflict. In the end, only 97 of the 217 deputies voted in favour of this initiative.
The 69-year-old politician is the founder of one of the most influential movements of the so-called "Political Islam", the current of thought that spurred the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the first half of the 20th century. He knew both prison and exile in his long struggle against the authoritarian regimes of Habib Bourghiba - considered the father of Tunisian independence - and the overthrown Ben Ali, until at the end of the sixties he created "Ennahda" together with the lawyer Abdelfatah Mourou.
Ghannouchi lived for a long time in the United Kingdom and France, where he stood out for his intellectual work. He returned home in 2011 and put himself, along with other politicians and activists, at the head of the democratic transition in the country. Since then, he has won a large part of the country's elections with the exception of the 2014 legislative elections, but this has not prevented him from losing nearly one million voters.
