{Habib Essid’s plea comes after an emergency cabinet meeting following a wave of violent protests over unemployment.}<\/p>\n
Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid has pleaded for “patience” following a wave of violent demonstrations against poverty and unemployment, the worst social unrest since the 2011 revolution.<\/p>\n
Essid spoke on Saturday after chairing an emergency cabinet meeting, as authorities said a night-time nation-wide curfew would be indefinite.<\/p>\n
Tunisia “is in danger despite the positive things which we have accomplished, particularly the transition towards democracy”, Essid said, urging people to “understand that there are difficulties”.<\/p>\n
“Solutions exist, but some patience and optimism are needed,” Essid added.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Tunis, said that thousands of dissatisfied people have taken to the streets in recent days, demanding immediate action against unemployment and poor economic conditions.<\/p>\n
“They say we voted for this government because we had hopes that this government would tackle corruption, poverty and offer job opportunities for almost a million unemployed Tunisians,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The government is saying that it does not have a quick fix and that it will take some time before it can meet the people’s demands. It is quite a delicate situation for a government that just a few years ago was promising a better future.” Ahelbarra said.<\/p>\n
International backing<\/p>\n
Protests over unemployment in Tunisia, which started in the western Kasserine province, intensified and spread to other parts of the country on Thursday.<\/p>\n
On Friday, President Beji Caid Essebsi said in a televised address that the government would put a programme in place to try to ease the unemployment rate.<\/p>\n
He also warned that members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in neighbouring Libya may use the unrest in Tunisia to sneak into the country.<\/p>\n
France will provide $1.1bn over five years to help Tunisia deal with its transition to democracy, French President Francois Hollande said on Friday.<\/p>\n
Ahelbarra said the only option for the Tunisian government at the moment is to ask for more international support to prevent a further descent towards more instability<\/p>\n
“This is exactly why President Essebsi yesterday was stressing the fact that groups like ISIL are seizing the opportunity to try to further destabilise Tunisia,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But the problem that you have here in the country is that people are waiting for immediate decisions to be taken by the government.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the country’s interior ministry said on Saturday that 423 people have been arrested across the country for being involved in acts of violence.<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera:[Tunisia PM appeals for ‘patience’ after street protests->http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/01\/tunisia-holds-emergency-cabinet-meeting-curfew-160123120336632.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Habib Essid’s plea comes after an emergency cabinet meeting following a wave of violent protests over unemployment.} Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid has pleaded for “patience” following a wave of violent demonstrations against poverty and unemployment, the worst social unrest since the 2011 revolution. Essid spoke on Saturday after chairing an emergency cabinet meeting, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000071710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-22737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000071710,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22737.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22737.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22737.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22737.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22737.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton22737.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000071710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22737"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=22737"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=22737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}