Members in the Tunisian House of Representatives are preparing for a new petition to remove confidence from Rachid Ghannouchi, the Speaker of Parliament and Leader of the Ennahda Movement.
“Parliamentary blocs have begun collecting signatures and they will be formally submitted at a later date,” MP for the opposition Reform bloc, Hasouna Al-Nassafi said.
Al-Nassif noted that there is lack of management during sessions and Ghannouchi has failed to manage the differences between the blocks and he was not neutral, so it became difficult to work within the House of Representatives.
Tunisian Parliament sessions witness sharp disputes between the blocs, especially with the Karama Coalition which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Some parties from the Democratic Bloc accuse Ghannouchi, of favoring the Karama Coalition and turning a blind eye toward their violence.
“The petition is in the right way and we will work to bring down Ghannouchi this time, and our goal is not 73 deputies,” this is what the independent MP Al-Munji Al-Rawi said.
He also indicated that all parliamentary blocs are involved in the petition except for the Ennahda Movement and the Karama Coalition.
If the petition is formally submitted it will be the second no confident listagainst Ghannoushi, as the first one was dropped by a vote in June last year.
However, the petition needs signatures of one third of the representatives of Parliament at least 73 of the 217 deputies, and the no-confidence requires an absolute majority vote.
In the same context, it is indicated that Ghannouchi has the support of his party, the Ennahda Movement (53 seats) and his ally party Heart of Tunisia (29 seats) and the Karama Coalition (18 seats).
In another aspect, a source from the Administrative Court in Tunis revealed, Monday, that the Presidency of the Government requested an advisory opinion about the conflict raging with the presidency on the “constitutional oath” of the new ministers in the expanded government reshuffle
“The court will give its opinion on the procedures that accompanied the entire amendment; including the crisis of the constitutional oath, but it opinion will not be binding,” this is what the court spokesman Emad Algabry told the media.
Tunisia faces an unprecedented constitutional crisis because President Kais Saied rejected the new ministers chosen by the Prime Minister Hisham El-Mechichi, after receiving confidence from Parliament on January 26.
