Ghannouchi condemns Egypt's coup as disastrous

Tunisia’s En-Nahda movement leader Rashid Ghannouchi has affirmed that “the most important lesson to take from the Egyptian experience is to avoid following its lead because it’s doomed to failure”.

Ghannouchi criticized the chairman of Egypt’s Constituent Assembly Amr Moussa who voiced his support for Egypt’s Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi’s presidential bid during an interview with Al Arabiya News on Friday. Ghannouchi said during the World Economic Forum in Davos that “Egypt has followed a path that had disastrous consequences in the Arab world. The Arab world does not need to experience more coups. They are wrong and only lead to disasters and exclusion”, a reference to the military coup which ousted President Mohammad Morsi in July 2013.

Ghannouchi said he was “extremely disappointed with assertions that the Egyptian people were immature for electing a certain faction; and with the General who gave himself the right to challenge the people’s will telling the Egyptians that they took the wrong path and that he would put them on the right track by force”. “I defend a principle, no person or group of people have the right to defy the people’s will or the elections results”, he added.