The history of Ghannouchi.. 10 years strips the politician who presented himself as a savior for Tunisia

He is a political veteran and has the qualities of a chameleon, a polemic figure, some describe him as a radical Islamist, while others see him as a pragmatic politician who is acclimatized to all situations, including abandoning his basics, ready to sacrifice everything in exchange for remaining in power.

He spent decades as a fierce opponent of the regimes of President Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was found guilty of terrorist acts, and indicted of conspiracy. He received several court rulings, the most prominent of which was execution. He left Tunisia for Algeria, then Sudan, until he settled in exile in London, to turn back to Tunisia after 20 years, riding the wave of the Arab Spring, searching for his foothold in the political arena in the country.

Yes, we are talking about Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood Ennahdha Movement, who is he? How did he turn from a teacher to a politician who was considered the country’s number two before he was removed from office? How did he turn into a failed character for Tunisians, from a savior to one who plunged the country into the labyrinth of others?

     I. Ghannouchi: The beginning:

“Rached Ghannouchi, born on June 22, 1941 in El Hamma in Gabès Governorate, southern Tunisia, and his real name was Rashad Khriji. He grew up there where he acquired his primary education, before he moved to Gabès to continue his secondary education, obtained his degree from a Quranic school, and then went to Tunisia to be educated at Zaitouna University, where he obtained a degree in fundamentals of religion”.

“After becoming a teacher in Gafsa, Ghannouchi worked for two years before moving to Egypt in 1964 to complete his studies in agriculture at Cairo University, and was a fan of the Nasserism”.

As a result of the ongoing conflict between Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba and Salah Ben Youssef at the time, the Tunisian Embassy in Cairo prevented Tunisian students from remaining in Egypt. This led Ghannouchi to move to Damascus, where he obtained a Philosophy degree in 1968, and then to France with the aim of completing his studies at the University of Sorbonne.

     II. Back to Tunisia:

In the late 1960s, Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia, coinciding with Bourguiba taking measures to secularize society, changing the educational system and supporting religious studies to counter Marxist tendencies in union and university movements. Since 1970, the authorities have allowed the construction of mosques and prayer houses in universities and factories.

On June 19, 1967, in the context of progressive social and political participation, the Islamists of the Socialist Constitutional Party presented the Assembly for the Preservation of the Koran, which was established by the Department of Religions, with several places to focus on them, including Rached Ghannouchi, Abdelfattah Mourou, and Hmida Ennaifer.

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     III. Islamic Trend Movement:

Ghannouchi began teaching in high schools, universities and mosques, with a group that later founded the Islamic Group. The group began holding a conference in April 1972 and formed the seed and base of the movement that will be the symbol of political Islam in Tunisia in the 1980s, the Islamic Trend Movement.

Ghannouchi has been targeted by the judiciary and has been suspended several times before the courts, on charges of involvement in “terrorist” acts by the Tunisian authorities, accusing him of burning several educational centers, kidnapping officials, and for the first time sentenced to 11 years in prison, three years from 1981 to 1984, after he was released as part of a general amnesty, but he returned again to protests and political activity, to be tried again with hard labor and life imprisonment on September 27, 1987, a sentence that was not enough for President Habib Bourguiba, where he submitted a request for the lifting of the death penalty, and was not implemented because of the November 7, 1987 coup by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Ghannouchi, who ordered the release of May 1988.

“In the face of the new policy, Ghannouchi made a request at the beginning of 1989 for the Islamist Trend to become legal, before changing its name to Ennahdha, but that request was rejected in June of the same year”.

     IV. Escaping from Tunisia:

After struggles with authority and some state officials, Rached Ghannouchi left for Algiers on April 11, 1989, then moved to Sudan, which was a guest house for political Islamist figures. He was received by his fellow band member, Hassan al-Tourabi, of which he married his sister and gave him Sudanese citizenship. At the same time, he became president of Ennahdha in 1991, but Ghannouchi decided to settle in exile in Acton, on the outskirts of London, the same year.

On August 28, 1992, he was sentenced in absentia by the Military Court of Tunisia, along with other Ennahdha leaders, to life imprisonment for plotting against the President of the State. In August 1993, he obtained political asylum in Britain, where he remained for more than two decades, until he returned with the revolution of the Tunisian street against unemployment and corruption in 2011.

During his exile from Tunisia, several countries prevented Ghannouchi from entering the country, such as the United States, Egypt, and Lebanon, and in March 1995 he was expelled from Spain while participating in an international symposium held in Córdoba on Islam and its relationship to modernity.

     V. Ghannouchi’s judicial rulings:

“In short, the sheikh, as his supporters call him, was tried several times by the Tunisian regime that preceded the 2011 revolution and accused him and his movement of many abuses, the most important of which were:

• He was tried in 1981 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
• He was tried in 1987 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Tried in absentia in 1991 again, sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Tried in absentia in 1998 with the same previous sentence.

     VI. Riding the 2011 Revolution:

Rached Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia on January 30, 2011, after the Tunisian revolution, which led to the fall of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He remained president of Ennahdha and worked to erase all traces of Islamist extremism in his speech. He began presenting himself as a moderate who led a party similar to Turkey’s Justice and Development Party.

At the end of 2011, Ghannouchi emerged with the joy of the fall of the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and the path that has been paved to reach the corridors of power and governance. This heralds the fall of the monarchies in the Arab countries, passing the talk about Tunisia, to geographic extensions that reflect the Brotherhood’s tendency, extending across countries that do not recognize the single national name and see the country as one nation.

“Ghannouchi, who has close ties with Qatar and Turkey, has sought to be in power since that year, and his party is a key figure in all the political alliances that hold power in the country“.

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     VII. Reaching authority

Indeed, the movement was able to control the reins of power after winning first place in the elections of the National Constituent Assembly on October 23, 2011, with 89 seats out of 217. It achieved the goal, which has been its goal since the declaration of its establishment in 1981 under the name of the Islamic trend, and this goal of governance is nothing but a means to empower the Islamist project based on what they call the totalitarian conception of Islam.

“Ennahdha’s presence at the wheels of power in Tunisia has continued for 10 years, giving it a foothold in the ruling system, and although it has not even been at the forefront of the scene in some periods, it was largely in control, forming between 2011 and 2014 two governments headed by two first-tier figures in the leadership of the movement: “The first was headed by Hamadi Jebali and lasted from December 24, 2011 to March 13, 2013, and the second by Ali Larayedh from March 13, 2013 to January 29, 2014”.

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     VIII. Stumbling start

After the 26 October 2014 elections, the movement fell to second place after Nidaa Tounes, winning 69 seats, but continuing its presence in the government within the framework of the so-called Consensus Policy, which reflects the agreement reached between Rached Ghannouchi and Beji Caid el Sebsi (President of the Republic from 2014 to 2019). Ennahdha’s share of ministerial positions in successive governments throughout the 2014/19 electoral period has evolved from one minister and 3 heads of state in Habib Essid’s first government to 4 ministers and 3 state writers in Youssef Chahed’s government.

In the 2019 elections, the movement won first place with 52 seats, but failed to form the government that it had entrusted to Habib Jemli, a little-known figure with no political experience.

It participated with six ministers in the short-lived government of Elyes Fakhfakh (February 27, 2020/2 September 2020), which Ennahdha brought down under the pretext of corruption suspicions surrounding its president Fakhfakh, but its aim was to involve its ally, the Heart of Tunisia Party, although it had accused its president Nabil Karoui of corruption during the electoral campaign, and it did not participate in the government of Hichem Mechichi, but it was his biggest supporter.

“Ten years of Ennahdha’s domination of Tunisia have resulted in social injustice, financial and administrative corruption, and the Tunisian street is once again angry a decade later, but this time it is based on the constitution, the law, the army, and the president”.

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     XI. Exclusion:

Following massive demonstrations in the country, protesting the deterioration of the health, economic and social conditions, and the continuation of the practices of the Brotherhood in corrupting institutions, penetrating the judiciary and practicing violence against opponents, Tunisian President Kais Saied announced on July 25, 2021, a series of exceptional decisions, based on Article 80 of the Constitution, to suspend the work of the parliament that was headed by Rached Ghannouchi, to lift the immunity of its deputies and to exempt the government of Hichem Mechichi. The most important result of these measures was the removal of Ennahdha from the governing scene and control of the legislative and executive bodies of the state.

Before July 25, Ghannouchi knew that things were slipping out of his hands, that the street was exhausted, that his patience was exhausted and that he ruled at full speed. The leader of the Ennahdha called for a change of the Tunisian regime to be fully parliamentary, in order to neutralize the power of the president, while being convinced that Ennahdha would still retain the majority of seats in Parliament. He wanted the word “rebirth” in the parliament he presided over to be placed at the top of the state administration.

There were great contradictions, and there was a lack of vision, the inability to free the burden of group allegiance in exchange for loyalty to the motherland, the outcome of the Ennahdha movement was clear, with Ghannouchi the only one who could not see it. Today, Ennahdha suffers from deep dissension on all levels, and all dissidents aim to flee Ghannouchi Square. The result of Ennahdha was legible; Ghannouchi was the only one who could not see it; today Ennahdha is facing major fissures in its ranks at all levels; all the dissidents aim to escape from Ghannouchi Square.

Ghannouchi was a project of a religious jurist, but he was influenced by socialists, especially by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, then by Libyan Colonel Mouammar Kadhafi and the National Hadith. He finally settled on the approach of the Muslim Brotherhood, and became like the Brotherhood’s members; Hassan al-Tourabi, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Ḥasan al-Hudaibi, all ideological originators of the group, present it as a unique system of Islamization of politics. He spent his life like them in exile or in prison, accused of creating unrest and conspiracy.