Thousands of protesters massed into the Tunisian capital yesterday to call for the caretaker government put in place after the ouster of veteran President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14 to resign because of its links with the old regime.
“The battle will play out in Tunis. That’s why we’ve come here. To bring down the government. We have to clean up everything,” on protester told AFP.
Many of the protesters had come from impoverished rural regions in central Tunisia where the first social protests against President Ben Ali started last month.
They also called for Mr Ben Ali’s powerful Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party, which has dominated Tunisia for decades, to be abolished.
Mr Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia amid a wave of demonstrations that began when a 26-year-old fruit vendor set fire himself to protest police abuse.
The Arab world’s first popular revolt in recent history has triggered similar protests across the region, particularly in Algeria, Egypt and Yemen.
The United States yesterday said it hoped the Arab world would tackle reforms after the “example” of the Tunisian uprising as thousands of people rallied in the Tunisian capital and in Egypt to call for radical change.
“I certainly expect that we’ll be using the Tunisian example” in talks with other Arab governments, said Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, the first senior foreign envoy to visit Tunisia since this month’s uprising.
“The challenges being faced in many parts of the world, particularly in the Arab world, are the same and we hope people will be addressing these legitimate political, social, economic grievances,” he told reporters.
Mr Feltman, who met with Tunisian ministers and civil society figures during his visit, also said that only free and fair elections would strengthen and give credibility to the north African state’s embattled leadership.
Some of the signs held up also by protesters indicated opposition to the US envoy’s visit, reading: “Feltman go home!” and “No to US and French interference!”
Moncef Marzouki, an opposition leader who came to address the crowd in Tunis and has said he will run for President, was chased away and insulted by a group of protesters who called him an “agent of the French and the Americans.”
Mr Marzouki had returned to Tunisia from his exile in Paris last week.
A rally in favour of the new leadership was also broken up by a larger anti-government crowd in chaotic scenes along the central Avenue Bourguiba.
Hundreds of the protesters arrived in Tunis on Sunday and have spent two nights camped out in front of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi’s offices in defiance of a curfew and a state of emergency banning public assemblies.
Their numbers swell during the day as they are joined by other malcontents.
The new government has announced unprecedented democratic freedoms for Tunisia after the end of President Ben Ali’s 23-year rule, but many people are angry that figures from the previous regime, like Mr Ghannouchi, remain in the Cabinet.