Clashes outside Tunisia parliament after president ousts PM

Street clashes erupted outside Tunisia’s army-barricaded parliament, a day after President Kais Saied ousted the prime minister and suspended the legislature, plunging the young democracy into a constitutional crisis, AFP reported.

According to AFP, Saied sacked Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and ordered parliament closed for 30 days, a move the biggest political party Ennahdha decried as a “coup,” following a day of angry street protests against the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Soldiers blockaded the assembly in Tunis while, outside, the president’s supporters hurled stones and insults at backers of Ennahdha, whose leader staged a sit-in to protest being barred entry to the complex.

Saied’s dramatic move comes even though the constitution enshrines a parliamentary democracy and largely limits presidential powers to security and diplomacy.

It “is a coup d’etat against the revolution and against the constitution,” Ennahdha, which was the biggest party in Tunisia’s fractious ruling coalition, charged in a Facebook post.

It warned that its members “will defend the revolution.”

The crisis follows prolonged deadlock between the president, the premier and Ennahdha chief Rached Ghannouchi, which has crippled the Covid response as deaths have surged to one of the world’s highest per capita rates.