authoritarianism in MENA

(Reuters) - Tunisia's ruling Islamists dissolved the government and promised rapid elections in a bid to restore calm after the killing of an opposition leader sparked the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago. The prime minister's announcement late on Wednesday that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the end of a day which had begun with the gunning down of Chokri Belaid, a left-wing lawyer with a modest political following but who spoke for many who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

In Tunis, the crowd set fire to the headquarters of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which won the most seats in an legislative election 16 months ago.

Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali of Ennahda spoke on television on Wednesday evening to declare that weeks of talks among the various political parties on reshaping the government had failed and that he would replace his entire cabinet with non-partisan technocrats until elections could be held as soon as possible.

The death of Mr Belaid, a leading critic of the governing party has proved to Tunisians what they already feared, says our correspondent, and Friday's funeral is certain to be an emotional and highly charged event. Government critics say that in recent months, Ennahda has allowed ultra-conservative Muslim groups to impose their will and opinions on what was always regarded as a bastion of Arab secularism.

four opposition groups - including Mr Belaid's Popular Front - announced that they were pulling out of the country's constituent assembly in protest

As Jebali spoke Friday, thousands of Tunisians were demonstrating in the streets of the capital in outrage over the assassination, calling on Jebali to resign. Jebali denied that his party had anything to do with the killing -- the first assassination since Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" -- and urged his fellow countrymen to act with restraint. "I already told them -- don't play role of the law, do not respond with violence," he said. "Otherwise, we are trapped, because the goal of those who shot Belaid is to make us react violently."

"Tunisian people made the Jasmine Revolution for two goals: revolution against dictatorship and revolution against corruption, and they also wanted social justice," he said. Those goals have not been betrayed, he said. "The biggest proof is what is happening in the streets -- protests, free press. I don't think that another press in the world enjoys more than here in Tunisia. Beside, we are not corrupt people, but if people made a revolution against us, that's their right, and we will bow to the will of our people."

A general strike called by trades unions for Friday, the first such action in Tunisia in three decades, closed many shops, cafes and other businesses. The national airline, Tunisair, warned of possible flight disruptions.

the power struggle within Iran’s ruling circle is becoming more vicious

Ali Larijani, a former presidential candidate, is the current speaker of parliament. He accused Mr Ahmadinejad of “waging war on God” by accusing a good Muslim of corruption with insufficient evidence—and threw the president out of parliament. “The judiciary is not a special family organisation,” said Mr Ahmadinejad, according to Iran’s state news agency, attacking the Larijanis as a whole.

an edict issued in November by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, explicitly prohibiting political infighting before the election. In response, Mr Ahmadinejad, with studious ambiguity, thanked him for shutting up political figures who talked out of turn and reminded him of the value of the presidency and the constitution

Tunisia’s worst crisis since the revolution that toppled the country’s long-serving, secular-minded dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled into exile in January 2011

In the past few months Islamist thugs have been taking the law into their own hands. Neighbourhood “committees to defend the revolution”, often including Nahda members who were political prisoners under Mr Ben Ali, have been accused of trying to intimidate opposition parties and have incurred growing hostility from more secular types. In December they violently broke up a trade-union rally.

The veneration of local saints across north Africa harks back to pre-Islamic Berber and sub-Saharan cultures. Muslim reformists in 19th-century Tunisia dismissed such traditions as demeaning and superstitious. Under Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first president after its independence from France in 1956, many shrines were turned into museums, cultural centres or even cafés. Others were officially tolerated for giving succour to people with medical or psychological worries. Nahda, which is close to the Muslim Brotherhood, has proclaimed an “Arab and Islamic identity”, implying distaste for shrine worship. But the desecrations obliged them to declare their respect for Tunisia’s diverse cultural and ethnic heritage.

the stances of your administration have given political cover to the current authoritarian regime in Egypt and allowed it to fearlessly implement undemocratic policies and commit numerous acts of repression

Statements that “Egypt is witnessing a genuine and broad-based process of democratisation” have covered over and indeed legitimised the undemocratic processes by which the Constituent Assembly passed the new constitution, an issue which has in turn led to greatly heightened instability in the country. Calls for “the opposition [to] remain non-violent” and for “the government and security forces [to] exercise self-restraint in the face of protester violence” have allowed the police and the current Egyptian administration to shirk their responsibilities to secure demonstrations and to respond to the demands of the Egyptian people, and have allowed them to place the blame for violence and instability on protesters themselves. Urging “the opposition [to] engage in a national dialogue without preconditions” undermines the ability of the opposition to play a real role in the decision-making processes of the country, as these “dialogues” seldom result in anything more concrete than a photo-op with the president.

when these statements come from the world’s superpower — the one most able to have a positive or negative impact on policies in Egypt and the region, not to mention the biggest donor and material supporter of the Egyptian regime for the past 35 years — they become lethal ammunition, offering political protection to perpetrators of murder, torture, brutality and rape.

A spokesman for President Marzouki's Congress for the Republic ( CPR) told Reuters news agency that it would withdraw its three ministers from the Ennahda-led government because its demands over key portfolios had been ignored.

Another leader of the centre-left CPR, Chokri Yacoub, told the state-run TAP news agency that the withdrawal would be confirmed during a news conference on Monday.

Sources within the Congress for the Republic (CPR) also said they believed that a technocratic government was not the solution to the crisis. Instead, party leaders are reported to support the creation of a national unity government, led by Mr Jebali and supported by technocrats.