Tunisia's Larayedh, the Islamist PM Downed by Political Murders
Tortured under Tunisia's ousted dictatorship, Islamist premier Ali Larayedh preached reconciliation during his turbulent 11 months in office but twin political assassinations eventually forced his resignation Thursday.
Larayedh took office last February, after the murder of leftist opposition leader Chokri Belaid by suspected jihadists brought down his Islamist predecessor Hamadi Jebali.
The murder of a second opposition lawmaker, Mohamed Brahmi, in similar circumstances in July triggered a protracted political crisis that blocked the democratic transition for months and eventually forced him out.
Speaking shortly before he resigned, Larayedh said he had striven to make Tunisia a model for other countries emerging from dictatorship and still hoped it could be one.
"I hope that Tunisia will be an example for the world of democratic transition," he said.
When he took office last year, Larayedh had vowed to head a government "for all Tunisians" and appealed for the support of parties from across the political spectrum to "establish the democracy to which we all aspire."
But he never managed to win over the opposition, which remained deeply suspicious of his Islamist Ennahda party fearing it was bent on dismantling the secular constitution which Tunisia adopted at independence in 1956.
Many in the opposition regarded Larayedh as the wrong choice for prime minister right from the start, blaming him for failing as interior minister to stem the surge in Islamist militancy that saw the U.S. embassy attacked in September 2012 and Belaid murdered a few months later.
But the outgoing premier rejects any accusation of complacency towards the jihadists, and last summer his government blacklisted as a terrorist organization the Ansar al-Sharia movement blamed for much of the violence.
Larayedh was founding member of Ennahda in 1981 and led its consultative council through the early 1980s, before rising to head its politburo.
Arrested and sentenced to death in 1987, he was pardoned along with other Islamists on death row when now ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali seized power a few months later.
But he was rearrested in 1990 and eventually jailed for 15 years, 13 of which he spent in isolation.
Like many fellow Islamists, he was tortured in prison.
"I almost died several times in the jails of the interior ministry. But I mark the difference between that period and now. The revolution came to advance and establish a transitional justice and not to seek vengeance," he once said.
When Ennahda triumphed in Tunisia's first free elections in October 2011, 10 months after the Arab Spring uprising which toppled Ben Ali, Larayedh was appointed to head the ministry which had persecuted him and his party for so long.
He became prime minister less than 18 months later.
With his thick black mustache and glasses, the former naval engineer and father of three won credit from some opposition leaders for being more reasonable and conciliatory than other senior Islamists of his generation, despite the deep political divisions that dogged his premiership.
Source: Agence France Presse
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