TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisia’s prime minister, a holdover from the government toppled last month, resigned Sunday after a weekend of violent protests that left five people dead in the capital, Tunis.
Demonstrations across the Arab world continued Sunday, as leading academics and activists urged King Abdullah to enact sweeping change in Saudi Arabia and Arab League chief Amr Moussa declared his candidacy in this year’s Egyptian presidential election. Protests flared from Egypt to Bahrain.
Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi had been the target of weeks of demonstrations by protesters who felt that he was tainted by his links to the old government.
“My resignation will provide a better atmosphere for the new era,” Ghannouchi said on Tunisian national television. “My resignation is in the service of the country.”
Hours later, Tunisia’s interim president, Fouad Mebazaa, named a former government minister, Beji Caid-Essebsi, as the country’s new prime minister, the official Tunisian news agency, TAP, reported.
“We ask everyone for quiet,” Mebazaa said, calling for an end to “chaos.”
Tunisia has been unsettled since the upheaval that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, an event that became a catalyst for upheavals in neighboring Arab countries.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy shuffled his Cabinet’s top diplomatic and security posts Sunday, jettisoning Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who had been roundly criticized for her ties to Tunisia’s ousted regime and who had sent him her resignation letter earlier in the day. Alliot-Marie had only been in the post since November, but became the center of contention for her December vacation in Tunisia as protests forced out the former French protectorate’s longtime strongman.
Sarkozy announced that Defense Minister Alain Juppe, a longtime ally of former President Jacques Chirac, would become France’s new top diplomat.
Ghannouchi, Ben Ali’s prime minister for 11 years, had previously vowed to stay on to guide Tunisia until elections could be organized this summer.
“This [resignation] is not a flight from my responsibilities, but to open the way for another prime minister who - I hope - will have more margin for action than I have had, to give hope to the Tunisian people,” Ghannouchi said.
“I am not ready to be the man of repression, and I will never be,” Ghannouchi said, warning that unspecified forces appeared to be swelling to try to quash the move toward democracy.
It was unclear whether Ghannouchi’s resignation would mollify the various groups in Tunisia that have taken to the streets in recent weeks.
A protest Saturday turned violent when men wielding knives and stones attacked the Interior Ministry building, according to TAP.
The Interior Ministry described the violence as “organized criminal acts.” Protesters set fire to several police vehicles, smashed windows and ransacked several stores nearby, according to the news agency.
Five protesters were killed and 16 security officers were injured, it said. Officials said nearly 200 people were arrested over the past two days.
http://www.arkansas…">Protests rock Libya
SAUDI ARABIA
In Saudi Arabia, more than 100 leading academics and activists urged Abdullah for changes, including setting up a constitutional monarchy.
The activists’ statement, signed by 119 academics, activists and businessmen, was seen on several Saudi websites Sunday. While Abdullah is seen as a reformer, the pace of change has been slow as Saudi officials balance the need to push the country forward with the perennial pressure from hardline clergy in the conservative nation.
“We are seeing ... a receding of Saudi Arabia’s prominent regional role for which our nation was known and the .... prevalence of corruption and nepotism, the exacerbation of factionalism and a widening in the gap between state and society,” the statement said.
Detailing a list of economic and social ills in the kingdom, the activists said “the people’s consent is the sole guarantee for the unity and stability” and the people must be the source of power.
Abdullah ordered Sunday that government-sector workers with temporary contracts, which denied them major perks such as state pensions, be given permanent jobs.
Demonstrations are also called for next month in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
EGYPT
Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, declared his candidacy a day after a constitutional reform panel appointed by the country’s new military rulers recommended changes that relaxed eligibility rules governing who can run for president.
The changes, if adopted in a national referendum, woul dopen presidential elections to more competition and impose a two-term limit on future presidents - a shift from a system that allowed ousted leader Hosni Mubarak to rule for three decades.
During the 18-day pro-democracy uprising that forced Mubarak to step down as president Feb. 11, Moussa visited Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests, where his convoy was greeted with chants of “We want you as president, we want you as president!”
Earlier Sunday, about 500 Egyptians protested in the square to demand that Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq resign, saying he is a continuation of Mubarak’s rule. “Shafiq should leave,” they chanted. Mubarak appointed Shafiq in a Cabinet shake-up early on in the uprising in a failed attempt to defuse the unrest, and he has remained in the position as partof a caretaker government.
Also Sunday, more than 2,000 employees of the Assiut provincial government went on strike for better living conditions, saying senior officials are distributing social benefits unfairly. Protesters in the area also set a former ruling party building on fire.
BAHRAIN
Thousands of protesters streamed through Bahrain’s diplomatic area and other sites Sunday, chanting against the country’s king and rejecting his appeals for talks to end the tiny Persian Gulf nation’s nearly 2-week-old crisis.
“No dialogue until the regime is gone,” marchers chanted as they moved through the highly protected zone of embassies and diplomatic compounds in the capital, Manama. No violence was reported.
Other marchers shouted slogans to oust Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and plastered fences with fliers denouncing security forces for attacks that have killed seven people since the first protests Feb. 14 inspired by revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.
“The dictator fell in Tunisia, the dictator fell in Egypt and the dictator should fall here,” said the party leader, Hassan Mushaima, a dissident who has long demanded fundamental changes in what is effectively an absolute monarchy.
Some of the marchers in Bahrain claim that authorities still hold more than 200 political prisoners despite the release of about 100 political detainees last week.
Riot police in Oman clashed with pro-democracy protesters Sunday, killing at least one in a sharp escalation of tensions in the tightly ruled nation. Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, had replaced six Cabinet members Saturday in a bid to defuse tensions in the country.
In neighboring Yemen, opposition parties said they will join young protesters Tuesday in their push to topple the President Ali Abdullah Saleh. On Saturday, two powerful chiefs from his own tribe abandoned him, and hundreds of thousands called for his ouster.
Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Fuller and Michael Slackman of The New York Times, by Bouazza Ben Bouazza, Tarek El-Tablawy, Bassem Mroue, Adam Schreck, Ahmed Al-Haj and Jamey Keaton of The Associated Press and by Jihen Laghmari, Mariam Fam and Maher Chmaytelli of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/28/2011