After the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend here in the States, news on Tunisia is still making front-page headlines. Here’s the latest.
The New York Times has a front-webpage article about how Tunisia’s unity government is not holding together. Also on the paper’s Lede blog, Robert Mackey reports that a well-known activist blogger who had been arrested last week, Slim Amamou, has now joined the unity government. Quick turnaround.
The Times also reports that self-immolation—setting oneself on fire—is becoming a more popular, if not worrisome, form of protest.
Update, 12:48 pm: The Guardian UK just announced that Tunisia’s interim president, Fouad Mebazza, and the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, both members of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), Tunisia’s former ruling party, have both resigned from the party. They’ve bowed to pressure by opposition leaders and protesters that the unity government was under too much influence from the RCD.
Plenty of news outlets are analyzing what Tunisia’s revolution means to the rest of the Middle East, especially to countries with unstable goverments of their own. Here’s the Christian Science Monitor‘s take, asking if Tunisia could be a “tipping point” for the rest of the region.
The Daily Beast has an in-depth look at Laila Trabelsi, the wife of former president Ben Ali, who was despised by many Tunisians for her and her family’s wealth, her tight-fisted control of government power and positions, and her public image.
The BBC has set up a dedicated page to news about Tunisia: notably helpful is its list of key players in the new government, quotes by world leaders on the current situation (including President Obama), and an analysis on what’s next by Emma Murphy of Durham University.
We were checking out Al-Jazeera English‘s page on Tunisian updates last Friday: new articles include a story that American diplomats (through cables released by WikiLeaks) were determining who could succeed Ben Ali as early as 2006. Tunisians are professing thems as wary of the unity government as members of the former ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, are still participating in negotiations and meetings.
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