Manama: Tunisia's new president has called for a six-month political and social truce that would help save the country from sliding into chaos and financial crisis.
"I appeal to all of you to grant us six months, just six months," Munsif Marzouki said in his first address to the nation as president.
"The new government should not be made to assume the mistakes of the past and should be given a chance. The failure to allow us to work for the country amounts to a collective suicide," he said.
Marzouki said that he was sincere in his call for the respite and that he would tender his resignation if the six-month grace period did not yield tangible results.
Working conditions
Tunisia where a popular uprising ousted the former president Zine El Abidine Bin Ali and changed the regime in January has been rocked by a series of demonstrations, sit-ins and industrial action by people demanding better working conditions and wages and showing ominous signs of impatience.
The central bank has projected the growth rate to be flat or negative for the current fiscal and warned that urgent measures had to be taken to revive the shaken economy.
Tourism, one of the most robust cash earning sectors in the past, has been badly hit after many tourists, concerned about the effects of the post-revolution unrest, opted out of the country.
Exports
Exports to Europe have also been affected by the financial crisis gripping the continent.
"The action in the phosphate sector has already cost the state billions in lost revenues," Marzouki, a doctor by profession and a rights activist who spent time in prison under Bin Ali, said.
He was elected president by the national constituent assembly under a deal struck between Al Nahda, the moderate Islamist party that carried 89 of the 217 seats, the Congress for the Republic, Marzouki's secular party, that won 29 seats and Ettakatol, the Forum, another secular party that had 20 seats in the October 23 elections.
Al Nahda took the now all-powerful post of prime minister while Ettakatol had the post of assembly speaker.
