Tunisia’s General Union of Workers, the country’s most powerful labor union, announced Friday the launch of the so-called National Salvation Initiative in an attempt to dialogue with the government just hours before the second round of Sunday’s legislative elections, and in the midst of the political crisis the country has been going through for a year and a half.
The union’s secretary general, Nuredin Tabubi, on Friday described the initiative as an attempt to solve decades of constant crises. «This country is drowning and we have no choice but to sit down and talk,» he said at a press conference reported by the Tunisien Numerique portal.
The initiative, necessary according to Tabubi given the existing fragmentation among the Tunisian political opposition, is for the moment limited to civil organizations such as the National Association of Lawyers, the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights and the Tunisian Forum for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights, although the secretary general has not ruled out the participation of the parties.
The country’s president, Kais Saied, has been pushing since July 2021 a series of measures to reform Tunisia’s political system, including a constitutional referendum, approved amid opposition boycott, which strengthens the powers of the presidency. The opposition has denounced an authoritarian drift of the president and has demanded his resignation.
Voter apathy is enormous. Only 11.2 percent of registered voters participated in last month’s first round, the lowest turnout of any national vote since the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The legislature, moreover, will have almost zero power to hold the president accountable.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
