Tunisia PM announces new Cabinet to ease political tensions

Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed revealed a new Cabinet yesterday in the hopes of ending the country’s political in-fighting.

As part of the reforms, Chahed’s advisor from the Ennahda party, Taoufik Rajhi, will be part of the new Economic Reforms Ministry.

The new Cabinet will give the prime minister the motivation to push ahead with tough reforms in the public sector and pension system which will be measures used to improve Tunisia’s finances in line with IMF demands.

Former finance minister Ridha Chalgoum, close to the Nidaa Tounes party, will make a return to the ministry in the new Cabinet, as well as Nidaa ally and Lotfi Braham as interior minister.

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Six members of the Nidaa Tounes allies were appointed to the 13 Cabinet changes while the Ennahda party kept three posts and the new economic reforms portfolio.

Since the revolution in 2011 that ousted long-standing leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia has struggled with reforms due to political infighting and social pressure in protest against the lack of jobs and the type of economic conditions that sparked the uprising in the first place.

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Nidaa Tounes pressured Chahed for more representation in the Cabinet in light of their election victory in 2014 which was overridden by a power-sharing government instead.

This week the powerful UGTT labour union warned it would act as a mediator in easing the tensions between the secular Nidaa Tounes and Islamist Ennahda parties as it has done before in attempting to uphold Tunisia’s young democracy.

The country has also been attempting to tackle the widespread corruption that provoked the Arab Spring in 2011 but little remains changed as the corruption cases grow. A number of senior business men and ministers have been arrested in Chahed’s crackdown which has been his government’s main focus since forming in 2016.