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In reply to the discussion: I find it very interesting that people with first world problems [View all]UnrepentantLiberal
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He said Islamist governments cannot govern within a coalition. He cited Iran as an example where around the 1979 revolution, Islamist parties started out in coalition with others, but then purged the opposition until it became an Islamic state.
"We have a political party that wants to govern by itself," he said of Ennahda.
In the past, Essebsi said he considered Ennahda a moderate, centrist party. "I was wrong," he said. "It is really different from what I thought." Now he views it as an Islamist party that cannot cooperate with others and cannot accept different opinions.
With the coalition parties having "diametrically opposed" orientations, Essebsi said the constituent assembly has become stagnant while also overstepping its one-year term, as was originally set. It's failed to complete its tasks for the transition period, including finalizing the new constitution and holding elections, he said. Because the elected officials have "ignored deadlines," he suggested that the assembly be dissolved.
Instead of working toward democratic change, he said, the government became sidetracked by debates such as whether to implement Sharia as the basis for the constitution as well as whether to redefine the status of women compared with men as being "complementary" as opposed to equal. Essebsi thanked Ennahda leaders for ultimately not going through with those initiatives, but said with these distractions, the country hasn't been able to "make a single step forward."
More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/beji-caid-essebsi-tunisian-islamists-fail-at-consensus.html
Power games of Islamists reflect internal politics
It was always clear that, given a free, democratic vote, post-revolutionary countries such as Egypt and Tunisia would return parliaments with high percentages of Islamist members. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Ennahda (Renaissance) party in Tunisia both have deep roots, strong organisation and hard-won credibility for being corruption-free, distributing social welfare and remaining steadfast in opposition to dictators who repressed them.
But it wasn't always clear that, once in government, political Islam in these countries could be so monopolist and exclusionary. While at one point, Islamist movements in Egypt and Tunisia may have seemed leagues apart in style, the similarities are now growing, in government.
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In Tunisia, disillusion with the Ennahda-led coalition exploded onto the streets after the tragic killing of opposition figure Chokri Belaid, in early February. That exposed the terrible, escalating political violence in Tunisia that has fermented over the past year - a recent Human Rights Watch report chronicles a litany of "religiously motivated" attacks on intellectuals, artists and political figures.
Ennahda has been accused of doing nothing to stem this violence, for fear of losing political ground to the ultraconservative Salafists thought to be behind such attacks.
More: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/power-games-of-islamists-reflect-internal-politics
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