TUNIS – Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki's secular party withdrew Sunday from an Islamist-led government already reeling from last week's assassination of secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid. Belaid's killing Wednesday – Tunisia's first such political assassination in decades – has thrown the government and the country into turmoil, widening rifts between the dominant Islamist Ennahda party and its secular-minded foes. “We have been saying for a week that if the foreign and justice ministers were not changed, we would withdraw from the government,” Samir Ben Amor, an official of Marzouki's Congress for the Republic Party (CPR), was quoted as saying. The CPR has criticized the performance of the two ministers, one of whom, Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, is the son-in-law of Ennahda party leader Rachid Ghannouchi. Ben Amor said the CPR's withdrawal was unconnected to Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali's decision, announced after Belaid was killed, to form a non-partisan government of technocrats to run the country until elections can be held later in the year. Senior politicians in Ennahda, as well as in its two non-Islamist coalition partners, had criticized Jebali's proposal, saying he had failed to consult them first. Jebali said Saturday he would unveil his new cabinet this week, but would resign if political parties did not support it. A senior Ennahda official, who asked not to be named, said the National Constituent Assembly would have the final say, but added: “We see that it will be possible to form a government of technocrats that includes political parties.” Ben Amor said Marzouki's CPR would formally submit the resignation of its three ministers to Jebali Monday. Political analyst Youssef Ouslati said the party was “trying to jump out of a sinking ship”, but that its decision had no great weight because Jebali was now the central player. He said that if political uncertainty continued, “the street will be the crucial element.” The CPR's departure is the first major shake-up in the government set up in December 2011 after an election for a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. The CPR came a distant second in the election, winning 29 of the assembly's 217 seats to Ennahda's 89, but Marzouki was elected interim president by the assembly in a show of unity and his party entered a coalition government led by Ennahda. Some members of Belaid's family have accused Ennahda of being behind the shooting, something the party denies. Ghannouchi, Ennahda's leader, has threatened legal action against politicians or journalists pointing the finger at him, saying they were “exploiting the blood of the deceased for narrow political ends at the expense of the truth”. Opposition forces have struggled to carve out an identity ever since Tunisia's post-revolution elections brought Islamists to power at a time of disunity between secular parties. The assassination of Belaid has thrown up an opportunity to close ranks but it “may be seized or squandered,” said Kamel Laabidi, founder of Vigilance for Democracy and Civil State, an NGO. The only joint initiative adopted by the secular parties has been an indefinite boycott of the National Constituent Assembly. The opposition has also come out in support of Jebali's initiative to form a new government of technocrats, a plan which has angered supporters of his own ruling Islamist party Ennahda. Political analyst Ahmed Manai said the opposition groups have struck up alliances to resist Ennahda but failed to come up with a credible program of government. At the center is Beji Caid Essebsi, an 86-year-old ex-premier who was also a minister under the father of Tunisia's independence, Habib Bourguiba. – Agencies?
