TUNISIA’S PRIME minister appointed leading opposition figures to a new coalition government yesterday, but Tunis remained on edge, stalked by tension and the fear of continuing violence.
In the chic seaside suburb of La Goulette, a middle-class enclave known as Little Sicily, the whitewashed cafés are normally bustling and the streets choked with traffic en route to the nearby port.
Yesterday, military helicopters swooped overhead and heavily armed soldiers sped along the main boulevard, urging people out of a sniper’s path.
Daily life was on hold: shops were boarded up, the schools all closed. Roads into town were deserted but for the makeshift checkpoints mounted by nervous soldiers and locals armed with clubs and stones.
Occasionally a gunshot echoed, and everyone would scurry for cover. “There are snipers up there in the building,” said Jamil Najjar, a young man at a civilian roadblock, pointing to a new apartment complex . “They can’t find them.”
Elsewhere in the city, police fired shots in the air and used tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters angered by the inclusion of members of former president Zine al Abedine Ben Ali’s RCD party in the cabinet.
“Tunisia free, RCD out,” one group chanted. The old ruling party will keep strategically vital posts such as interior and defence in Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi’s cabinet, but three opposition figures were also appointed.
French daily Le Monde reported yesterday that some European governments suspected Libyan intelligence had helped get Ben Ali out of the country. Around La Goulette, the atmosphere was especially fraught. The suburb was a symbol of the former ruling family’s control; its mayor since 2009 was Imad Trabelsi, one of former first lady Leila Ben Ali’s nephews, who was stabbed to death on Saturday.
He was steeped in the corruption and opulence for which the Trabelsi family is widely reviled.
When houses belonging to the Trabelsis were ransacked, looters were bemused to find pools, built-in lifts and birth certificates for horses.
Another member of the ruling clan, Sakher El Materi, owned the Tunisian concessions for Porsche, Volkswagen and Suzuki. So across La Goulette, brand-new cars at the port lay burnt out or overturned. “They’d pass through here in a Lamborghini and a Ferrari,” said Aziz Sombol, from an adjacent suburb. “They were taking our money.”
The interior minister said that 78 people have been killed since the unrest in Tunisia began. As sporadic gun battles continued last night, the army maintained that anyone who breached the 10-hour curfew would be shot.