Mourou takes off Muslim Brotherhood cloak, dances to promote presidential campaign

Asmaa Al-Batakouchi

A video footage was circulated on social media of vice-president of Ennahda Party Abdel Fattah Mourou while dancing and signing in a promotional campaign as he decided to enter Tunisia’s incoming presidential race.

Through the footage in which he appeared to be dancing, Mourou tried to introduce himself with a new image, disguising himself away from the Muslim Brotherhood’s intellectual cloak despite of his connection with Ennahda movement.

Tunisia’s electoral commission has said it had approved 26 candidates including two women for next month’s presidential election and had rejected 71 other applicants.

Among candidates approved for the presidential race are four candidates by Ennahda party, the Muslim Brotherhood political arm in Tunisia, namely Mourou, former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki, constitutional law professor Kais Saied and former prime minister Hamadi Jebali.

The Sept. 15 vote follows the death at age 92 last month of Beji Caid Essebsi, the first president to be democratically elected in Tunisia after the popular uprising of 2011.

A few weeks before Essebsi’s death, Mourou slammed Turkey-based extremist preacher Wagdi Ghoneim for slandering Essebsi in one of his videos.

Mourou said during a radio interview that he will submit a complaint to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to revoke Ghoneim’s residency in Turkey for misusing this right to spread his extremism. He further apologized to Tunisian people for receiving Mourou after the revolution.

In another attempt to distance himself from the extremism of the Muslim Brotherhood group, Mourou said he approves proposals to annul a law the forbids marriage between Tunisian Muslim women and non-Muslim men.

Another issues was related to inheritance equality between men and women, which Mourou saw as a step towards granting Tunisian women their rights, while stressing that Essebsi was a wise man. He also stressed that this is a mere financial issue and that there would be no problems as long as there is an agreement between family members to split inheritance equally between men and women.

Tunisian writer and political analyst Belhassan al-Yehiawy said that despite all the concessions by Ennahda and how it waived its reference when it approved a constitutional law that says that Islam is the official religion of Tunisia, despite that in the 70s it refused this law and demanded the law to stipulate that Islam is the religion of Tunisia.

He further said in an interview with the Reference that Mourou was against female civil rights, calling them secularism, but now, Ennahda is on top of parties defending women’s rights, not to mention Mourou’s remarks regarding equality between men and women in inheritance.

He also said that deputy head of Ennahda, Rached Al-Ghannouchi, is going through these steps to promote for his party’s campaign and distances it from the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group.