The Islamist-oriented Al-Nahda movement, which heads the ruling troika government in Tunisia, has agreed to dismiss the current government, headed by Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh, and to enter into negotiations with the secularist opposition over a new interim government. Expected to consist of independent technocrats, this government will oversee the forthcoming parliamentary elections. Many political stakeholders in Tunisia and many observers abroad are pinning high hopes on the forthcoming negotiations, which they believe will end the political stalemate in Tunisia and pave the way for a speedy democratic transition. Tunisia has been struggling to safeguard its path to democracy, made possible by the revolution that toppled the regime of former president Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali two-and-a-half years ago. The Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), the largest and oldest in the country, led the mediation efforts to try to resolve the political crisis that had escalated dramatically following the assassination of the prominent leftist opposition activist Chokri Belaid in February and then of opposition member of the Constituent Assembly Mohamed Al-Brahmi in July. The opposition has accused Al-Nahda of appeasing Islamist extremist movements such as the Ansar Al-Sharia group, although the Laarayedh government has recently placed this on its list of terrorist organisations. Opposition forces hold that Al-Nahda has struck up secret deals with Ansar Al-Sharia and other militant jihadist groups and charge that the assassinations of Belaid and Al-Brahmi were examples of how Al-Nahda had engaged such groups in the service of its political agenda. Al-Nahda's agreement to the UGTT initiative calling for the dismissal of the Laarayedh government in order to clear the way for a caretaker government of non-aligned technocrats only came after intense rounds of negotiations and as tensions continued to mount between the various political players. A few days previously, the UGTT had announced that its negotiations with Al-Nahda had broken down, precipitating more widespread and more vociferous demands than ever calling for the dismissal of the current government. Al-Nahda believes that the pressures being brought to bear on it by the secularist opposition seek to propel the ruling troika, and Al-Nahda in particular, to the same fate as that which met its counterpart in Egypt, where the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood failed to remain in power for more than a year. Nevertheless, the Islamist movement in Tunisia ultimately yielded to the heightened pressures. On Saturday, Lotfi Zeitoun, an Al-Nahda official, announced that the movement had agreed to the UGTT initiative without reservations and that dialogue with the opposition in order to rescue the country from its current political and economic crisis could begin on the following Monday or Tuesday. Simultaneously, the influential UGTT union, which is respected by all sides, issued a joint statement with three other organisations representative of lawyers and human rights groups welcoming Al-Nahda's unreserved agreement to its initiative. The statement called on all political parties to begin talks to agree on a date to start the negotiations, adding that it hoped the dialogue would begin this week. The UGTT initiative to end the political crisis calls for direct negotiations between all parties in the political process. The initiative sets a maximum of three weeks for the negotiations, during which the parties would agree on a deadline for completing the country's new draft constitution and the dates for parliamentary and presidential elections. Based on various reports, some expect the Laarayedh government to tender its resignation during the first session of the dialogue, although it will continue to administer the country during the three weeks of the talks, after which it will hand over power to the new interim government agreed upon by the parties in the dialogue. This government will also serve in a caretaker capacity for the remainder of the transitional phase. Observers agree that the UGTT has now finally succeeded in pushing Al-Nahda to budge from its insistence on keeping the Laarayedh government. After it had announced the collapse of negotiations with Al-Nahda earlier last week, the UGTT had called for mass demonstrations throughout the country to demand that Al-Nahda agree to dismiss that government. Al-Nahda had long resisted this measure, claiming that the opposition was seeking to demolish everything that had been accomplished so far in the country's transitional phase. At the same time it had said that short of this measure it would be willing to agree to talks without condition. However, it seems that the pressures being brought to bear by the secularist opposition and the syndicate organisations led by the UGTT led Al-Nahda to fear for its political future. It therefore made the concessions necessary for a breakthrough that would allow the storm to pass, while securing for itself a continued presence in the political process. Nevertheless, it appears that Al-Nahda continued to resist up until the last minute. Only a day before the movement announced its agreement to the UGTT initiative, Al-Nahda leader Rachid Al-Ghanouchi stated that “Tunisia must succeed over the last remaining metres of the democratic transition. We will not allow any regression to take place.” Observers interpreted this statement to be a message to the opposition forces and a way of signalling Al-Nahda's belief that the opposition wanted it to share the same fate as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Commenting on the latest developments, the Al-Sabah newspaper wrote in its editorial on Sunday that “a pause for contemplation and an objective distance from the people's revolution [of 14 January 2011] confirm that the Tunisian Revolution could have succeeded and could have offered Tunisia as a model had the political elites and the societal factions acted with an appropriate level of responsibility.” The editorial held that the Al-Nahda-led troika government had been chiefly responsible for the current situation in the country. “It has forfeited the opportunity for the country to achieve a smooth democratic transition by refusing to produce, from the outset, a clear roadmap for the coming political phases, especially with regard to the completion of the constitution and the date for the next elections,” the newspaper said. The implication is clear: the troika government had been intransigent from the outset of the crisis, and it had refused to yield to mounting popular demands. The editorial also held that the Al-Nahda-led government had neglected many crucial concerns, foremost among which was the question of terrorism for which it had produced no effective solutions. Following Al-Nahda's announcement of its agreement to the UGTT initiative on Saturday, the Tunisian government denied reports indicating that it would tender its resignation the moment the national dialogue began. Abdel-Salam Al-Zobeidi, a government spokesman, said that the government would wait to see what the talks produced, adding that it could not resign before the dialogue had begun. The Tunisian National Salvation Front (NSF), a political umbrella group for opposition parties similar to the NSF in Egypt, stated that while Al-Nahda had agreed to dialogue it had not agreed to dismiss the government before the dialogue ended. Tunisian NSF member Mohamed Jamour said that Al-Nahda was being devious in this regard. It had not agreed to the dismissal of the government as a fundamental condition for beginning the national dialogue and it was now dragging its feet in order to buy time, he said.
