Divisions hit Ennahda at decisive meeting because of dispute over Ghannouchi

Eslam Mohamed

The meeting of the Shura Council of the Tunisian Ennahda Movement on Sunday, November 15 witnessed increasing divisions within the movement, as media reports spoke of the withdrawal of a third of the members of the council from the meeting, in a first in the history of the movement.

Decisive meeting

The Shura Council was supposed to hold a meeting to decide the candidacy of the movement’s president, Rached Ghannouchi, for the leadership position of the movement. The meeting came after 60 leaders in the movement did not want Ghannouchi to run again, and they signed a petition to hold an emergency meeting of the Shura Council, where it was decided that the meeting would discuss internal differences in the movement and ways to encircle them.

Ghannouchi had announced that he did not intend to run for the presidency of the movement during the coming period and indicated that talking about the possibility of his candidacy for the presidency of the republic is considered premature. He said in a television interview that “Ennahda disputes are a normal matter that all political parties go through,” stressing that he did not call for the conference to be postponed.

Public disagreements

Regarding the openness of differences into the open, he considered that “the debate should return to the movement within the movement and among its members,” adding that the media shows the movement as being in a satisfactory state, and that its fate may be similar to that of the Nidaa Tounes party, which was founded by former president, Beji Qaid Essebsi, In 2012, in an indication of the possibility of the movement’s disintegration, it is worth noting that Article 31 of the Movement’s Basic Law states that “no member has the right to assume the leadership of the party for more than two consecutive terms.

Movement’s statement

For its part, Ennahda denied in a statement that a third of the members of the Shura Council had withdrawn from the 44th session, noting that the number of those withdrawing did not exceed 24 of the total 111 members who registered their attendance. The agenda was subsequently modified in response to the request of a number of members.

The movement’s statement noted that the session’s work continued until late in the evening, as usual, to study a number of national and internal files, adding that the session witnessed discussion of the position of the head of the movement on the general situation in the country, especially at the political and economic levels.

Last wave

Dr. Munther al-Onisi, chairman of the Health Committee of the Shura Council, presented a report on the health situation in the country, in addition to proposals on limiting the spread of the corona virus.

Munther Qafrach, head of the Front for the Salvation of Tunisia, recently made press statements in which he said that the recent conflicts and rifts that Ennahda is witnessing, which the public opinion does not know, may lead the movement to its historical annihilation, as this time it will be the final blow to Ennahda, coming from its president and not from its enemies.

The Ennahda crisis has taken an ascending pattern during the recent period, as the wave of resignations and splits included all leadership groups, the most prominent of which was the resignation of Lotfi Zaitoun from all Ennahda structures because of the political weight the man represented within it over a period of 23 years in London, which qualified him to be a political advisor from 2011 to 2019, as well as his appointment in the government of Hammadi al-Jabali (2012), and a candidate to lead the Ministry of Environment and Local Affairs in the government of Ilyas Fakhfakh, who resigned this year.