New cabinet in bid to get Tunisia out of its economic mess

Sara Rashad                       

The new Tunisian government, headed by Najla Bouden, has already started assuming its mission by trying to handle the North African country’s economic crisis.

The branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia works hard, meanwhile, to impede the government’s attempts to address Tunisian problems.

The Ennahda movement, the political arm of the Brotherhood, predicts the failure of the government in its mission.

Director-General of Finance and External Payments at the Central Bank of Tunisia, Abdelkarim Lassoud, has revealed what he described as ‘advanced’ talks with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to support Tunisia’s financial resources.

Crisis limits

Tunisia lags behind other Arab countries in terms of the economy.

The country’s financial crisis dates back the 2010 popular uprising against late autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Those rising up against Ben Ali demanded a decent life and better living conditions.

Following Ben Ali’s downfall, some of the country’s political forces made a political rise and lavished promises on the Tunisian people. Almost ten years later, these forces remain to have given the people nothing but lip service.

Instead of improving the Tunisians’ living conditions, the same political forces polarized Tunisia and kept fiddling against each other.

By doing so, the same forces largely marginalized Tunisia’s economic woes.

Ordinary Tunisians find themselves moving from bad to worse, which causes them to return to the streets to make the same demands they made in 2010, namely a decent life and better living conditions.

Tunisian President, Kais Saied, countered all this by dissolving on July 25 the Tunisian parliament and sacking the cabinet.

Now, the Tunisians pin a lot of hope on the new government to get their country out of the economic mess in which it has been mired for over a decade.

They also blame their country’s political forces for causing this mess.