Efforts to verify civil workers' certificates are 'stupid', Ennahda says

The Tunisian government’s decision to conduct a review of the university certificates of all its employees to verify their validity is a “stupid operation”, Riad Al-Shuaibi, the political adviser of Ennahda’s Rached Ghannouchi, said yesterday.

Al-Shuaibi asked: “Will an investigation be conducted into the fact that Mr Kais Saied obtained his baccalaureate degree in Syria? Or does this measure not include the protected leader?”

“If the head is corrupt, the body will not be honest, comprehensive scrutiny is being conducted within the Tunisian administration for the forged scientific certificates of employees… It is an idiotic process that is nothing more than a populist campaign to delude people that there is a political will that works to fight corruption. Will an investigation be conducted into the fact that Mr Kais Saied obtained his baccalaureate degree in Syria? Or does this measure not include the protected leader?”

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“Will an investigation be conducted into the failure of Mr Kais Saied to obtain a PhD to legalise his administrative status as a professor in higher education?… Does the law grant him the right to continue as a university professor without completing his academic qualifications?” Al-Shuaibi added.

This comes after government spokesperson, Nasreddine Nsibi, confirmed that all ministries had launched a process to check the certificates of their employees to verify their authenticity.

Nsibi emphasised that “every file related to a forged certificate will be referred to the judiciary”, adding that educational institutions had adopted “visual electronic seal for all the certificates” this year to tackle the problem.