Tunisia’s Brotherhood in bid to terrorize President Saied

Sara Rashad

The popularity of the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia, known as Ennahda Movement, has been declining since July this year when Tunisian President Kais Saied dissolved the parliament and sacked the cabinet.

Nevertheless, the group continues to fight for power.

Coup                            

Ennahda’s head, Rached Ghannouchi, has recently published pictures of protests staged by his movement’s loyalists.

During the protests, Ennahda’s adherents carried posters on which they wrote the phrase, the “night will surely pass”.

Protesters 

Ennahda has been abandoned by its members. The decline in the movement’s popularity has been manifest in the silence of its members and the wider Tunisian public in the face of the decisions taken by the Tunisian president.

The lack of reaction from the members of the movement left it high and dry.

The movement’s reaction to the decisions was also limited for months to meetings and tepid statements.

However, the latest demonstration by the members of the movement bucked this Ennahda trend.

The movement seems to have succeeded, for the first time, to mobilize large numbers of people near the parliament building against the July decisions of the Tunisian president.

Nonetheless, the same demonstration raised questions on where the movement got these people from.

Coordinator of the popular movement, the Streets Decide, Naila Ben Rahouma, said those who showed up outside the parliament building received money from Ennahda to join in the protest.

Ennahda, she said, had distributed money to bring the largest number of people together outside the parliament building and give the impression that it has a strong following on the streets.

“The movement provided transport to people from areas far away from the parliament building to ensure that the demonstration would succeed,” Ben Rahouma told The Reference.

She described these rallies as a ‘fabricated’ show that aimed to destroy Tunisia.

Ben Rahouma noted that Ennahda does not find support among Tunisians on the ground.

“The movement gave Tunisians nothing but social and economic failures in its ten years of rule,” Ben Rahouma said.