Tunisia trade union ‘no longer accepts’ president’s agenda

The highly effective UGTT says it would oppose Kais Saied’s reforms and defend freedoms ‘no matter the fee’.

The president's critics have denounced his strikes as a coup and have held repeated road protests [File: Hassene Dridi/AP]

Tunisia’s highly effective labour union has issued its clearest problem to President Kais Saied but, rejecting his political and financial agenda and saying it is not going to tolerate what it referred to as a risk to democracy.

“We now not settle for the present path due to its ambiguity and particular person rule, and the disagreeable surprises it hides for the destiny of the nation and democracy,” Noureddine Taboubi, chief of the Tunisian Normal Labour Union (UGTT), stated in a speech to 1000's of supporters on Saturday.

“We is not going to hesitate to defend rights and freedoms no matter the fee,” he added.

Saied shut down the elected parliament final 12 months and moved to rule by decree earlier than writing a new structure that was handed mid-year in a referendum with low turnout, organising elections for a brand new, weakened legislature.

The president’s critics have denounced his strikes as a coup and have held repeated road protests. Saied has stated his actions have been essential to avoid wasting Tunisia.

The parliamentary vote is ready to happen on December 17 however most political events are boycotting the ballot, faulting procedures the president has decreed together with bringing the electoral fee below his purview.

Different electoral modifications corresponding to ending the general public financing of campaigns will even make it troublesome for girls to run for workplace, the United States-based group Human Rights Watch warned.

Taboubi, on Saturday, described the vote as having “no color and style,” and the product of a structure that doesn't take pleasure in nationwide unanimity.

Although it repeatedly voiced concern, the one-million-member union had beforehand shunned brazenly opposing the president’s agenda, aside from a strike in the course of the 12 months over wages and spending cuts.

Opponents of Tunisia’s President Kais Saied participate in a protest in opposition to what they name his coup on July 25, in Tunis [File: Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters]

The new authorities appointed by Saied in October just lately angered the UGTT by proposing subsidy cuts and the restructuring of state-owned firms, in a push for an IMF bailout wanted to avert nationwide chapter.

Final month, the union referred to as for a normal strike within the area of Sfax, a day after a demonstrator died from inhaling tear gasoline fired to disperse protests in opposition to the reopening of a landfill web site.

It demanded that the perpetrators be held accountable.

The UGTT has confirmed able to paralysing the economic system with strikes that closed airports, public transport, ports and authorities places of work.