Tunisia was last night scrambling to find a new prime minister to end the political limbo after the ruling Ennahda party said that Hamadi Jebali had rejected the party’s request to return as prime minister, two days after his resignation.
The consultative council of Ennahda was meeting to choose a successor to Jebali, the ruling Islamist party’s number two.
Jebali quit after his plan to form a non-partisan government, announced in the wake of public outrage over the February 6 murder of leftist politician and Islamist critic Chokri Belaid, was rejected by his own party.
He summed up the malaise that has gripped the North African country for the past year, long before the assassination of Belaid.
“Our people are disillusioned by the political class,” Jebali said in announcing his resignation after failing to win support for an apolitical technocratic government to end the crisis.
“We must restore confidence,” he urged.
As the leader of a government that spent most of the past year bickering with the opposition while the economy continued to burn, Jebali bears some responsibility for that disillusionment.
But in the two weeks since Belaid’s killing, the pious politician has reinvented himself.
Gone is the party man, who turned a blind eye as supporters of Ennahda harangued and harassed its secular critics.
In championing an apolitical government to run the wounded country in the wake of Belaid’s murder Jebali has shown himself a statesman who puts the national good above partisan interests.
Taking on the party he co-founded and of which he is secretary general was a risky move for the 63-year-old engineer.
Ennahda’s dogmatic leader Rachid Ghannouchi rebuffed his proposal, arguing that, as the winner of the country’s first free election in 2011, the party still had a mandate to govern.
Ghannouchi did not go so far as to disavow Jebali but its second-in-command was forced to throw in the towel after having staked his job on the success of his initiative.
A spokesman for President Moncef Marzouki’s centre-left Congress for the Republic party, which is in coalition with Ennahda, said Jebali’s resignation, “reflected a real start to democracy in Tunisia.”
Jebali’s position within his own party has won him grudging respect from the opposition, leading to speculation that President Marzouki may ask him to return to form a unity government.
Jebali hinted he was ready to roll up his sleeves again and form a government that meets Ennahda half-way by including politicians as well as experts - but only on certain conditions.
The conditions included the setting of a date for general elections, the eradication of political violence and the abolition of “parallel security apparatuses” - a reference to the Committees to Protect the Revolution, a shadowy pro-government militia that is suspected of several attacks on the secular opposition.
Weakened by a year of inept rule Ennahda may be forced to make significant concessions, including surrendering some key cabinet posts.
The threat of renewed unrest if the political deadlock hangs over the country’s already ravaged economy.