A decade after his triumphant return to Tunisia after years in political exile, Rached Ghannouchi is keenly aware that he and his Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party may again be pushed into the political wilderness.
“Probably after a while, this meeting we’re having right now won’t be possible,” Ennahdha’s leader tells VOA in a recent interview at his Tunis office. He is flanked by two Tunisian flags. A third is pinned on his jacket.
“They might close Ennahdha’s headquarters,” Ghannouchi adds of state authorities under the tightening grip of President Kais Saied. He speaks in Arabic, but his English—sharpened from two decades of exile in Britain—is good enough to correct his translator.
Once Tunisia’s leading post-revolution force and part of every power-sharing government for a decade, Ennahdha has seen its fortunes plummet over the turbulent years since the country’s 2011 popular uprising.
Even as the party helped draft groundbreaking laws and the most progressive constitution in the Arab world—since replaced by a much-criticized new charter—Ennahdha also earned a large share of blame, fairly or unfairly, for growing economic stagnation, widespread corruption and political turmoil.
Its 81-year-old leader is particularly polarizing. Alternatively praised for putting a moderate, pragmatic stamp on political Islam, and criticized for fueling gridlock, Ghannouchi divides even his own party.
More than 100 senior members quit over Ghannouchi’s initially conciliatory response to President Saied’s power grab last year, which Ennahdha and other opposition groups call a ‘coup.’
Now, as Saied hardens his rule and rhetoric against Ennahdha in particular, the party’s fate is uncertain. Some analysts predict it could ultimately bounce back, along with Islamist movements in places like Egypt and Morocco, which briefly took wing with the Arab Spring.
But a number of observers say that resurrecting the “Renaissance” party, as Ennahdha is known in Arabic, may come at the price of its aging longtime leader.
“For the sake of Ennahdha, as well as Tunisian democracy,” Tunisian academic Haythem Guesmi wrote in Al Jazeera, “Ghannouchi should move to hand over the control of the party to someone who can connect with voters and unite them against Saied.”
Mistakes but not sins
Ghannouchi doesn’t see things that way. “It’s up to the people to decide” when he retires, he says.
But he has hardened his approach to Saied. Earlier this year, Ghannouchi joined forces with one-time rivals in the National Salvation Front coalition opposing the president’s authoritarian rule.
“The question in Tunisia is no longer whether you’re called Ennahdha, or Qalb Tounes,” says fellow member Samira Chaouchi, who heads the staunchly secular Qalb Tounes party. “The question is whether people are for or against democracy.”
Still the opposition is splintered, with some refusing to join forces with Ennahdha — reflecting a broader antipathy shared by many ordinary Tunisians.
“Everyone is responsible” for Tunisia’s problems, says 74-year-old leftist activist Hamda Moammar, who joined a recent anti-Saied demonstration. “But especially Ennahdha. It’s always wanted to mix religion with politics.”
Adding to Ennahdha’s challenges are judicial headaches. Since Saied’s power grab, opposition politicians including Ennahdha have faced house arrest or been targeted in judicial investigations over a raft of allegations. Some face travel bans — or have gone abroad to pre-empt them.
In recent weeks, Ghannouchi has been questioned over money laundering among other allegations that he dismisses as politically motivated.
“We’ve made mistakes, but not sins,” he says of the party’s time in power-sharing governments, expressing regret for their failure to grow the economy and deliver jobs—especially to youth.
“Our priorities were freedom and stability,” he adds. “But we didn’t pay enough attention to the socio-economic issues.”
Political headwinds
Ghannouchi is no stranger to political headwinds. Jailed in the 1980s under Tunisia’s past two authoritarian rulers, who rounded up thousands of Ennahdha members, he later sought refuge in Britain.
More than two decades later, after Tunisia’s 2011 so-called Jasmine revolution, he finally returned—welcomed at Tunis’ airport by thousands of cheering supporters. Ennahdha won the country’s first free elections later that year, with 37% of the vote.
Those heady days are long over. Experts estimate Ennahdha currently has about 10% support.
“Ennahdha has focused more on positioning its leaders in chairs of power than on really building forward-thinking visions and platforms that address bread-and-butter issues,” says Tunisia analyst Monica Marks of New York University Abu Dhabi.
But other Tunisian parties did the same, adds Marks, who believes anti-Ennahdha sentiments—fanned by Saied—amount to a “dangerous distraction” from very real threats to democracy that Tunisia’s current leader presents.
Analyst Hamadi Redissi is more critical — especially of Ghannouchi, who was speaker of Tunisia’s last parliament, which Saied dissolved in March.
“Ennahdha is a failed movement now,” he says.
“But if Kais Saied remains in power,” Redissi adds, and fails to grow the economy, “probably Ennahdha will recover.”
Closing door for dialogue
Not so long ago, Saied and Ghannouchi seemed on the same page. Both were religious conservatives. Ennahdha sought Saied’s advice during his former days as a law lecturer.
Ghannouchi’s party also backed Saied during his 2019 landslide victory that catapulted the party-less political neophyte to the pinnacle of power.
But relations quickly soured after Saied took office and Ghannouchi took the helm of a squabbling, gridlocked legislature.
Still, Ghannouchi initially called for dialogue after Saied seized emergency powers last year, amid massive protests and a sliding economy. Ghannouchi’s conciliatory approach drove some 113 senior Ennahdha members to leave; dozens demanded he not run again as party leader.
Nonetheless, longtime Ennahdha supporter Abdel Fatah Bouani believes Ghannouchi’s course was right.
“We want real dialogue, civilized dialogue in which everyone can participate,” Bouani says.
That seems increasingly unlikely.
Political scientist Andrew March, who is co-authoring a book on Ghannouchi, offers up worst-case scenarios for Ennahdha. They could include President Saied banning parties with a religious identity—or striking deals with other opposition groups that effectively sideline Ennahdha.
Describing Ghannouchi as “savvy and patient,” March says Ennahdha’s leader will do “what he thinks is most expedient” for his party’s survival—and to keep it from being labeled extremist.
“My guess is that he will avoid confrontations that could give the state an excuse to escalate repression,” March said in a recent interview with Brandeis University. “Even if this means he ends his career in house arrest—or even prison.”
Chaima Issa, a civil society leader who is part of the Salvation Front coalition, praises Ghannouchi as a “courageous man.”
“Rached Ghannouchi is doing a lot to bring this country back to a democracy, to defend the institutions,” she says. But Issa doesn’t see Ghannouchi—or any other veteran of Tunisia’s rocky transition—as part of the country’s future.
“We don’t want to deal with old hatreds and misunderstandings from past eras,” she says. “We need a new narrative.”
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