Chaabia follows Hamdi in suspending activities

Tunisian party Aridha Chaabia's executive office has stated it will be suspending its political activities in a display of "total solidarity" with the party's chairman, Hechmi Hamdi. Hamdi had announced on Monday that he would be freezing his own political activities. In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Aridha Chaabia leadership blasted the "systematic political and media exclusion" to which their chief has been subjected. Hamdi had frozen his political work in protest, demanding the fast-tracking of lawsuits filed against MPs who left his party's bloc to join others. Hamdi accuses most political powers in Tunisia, both in the ruling coalition and in the opposition, or excluding and discriminating against his party and holding it "in contempt." Chaabia came second in the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) elections in October 2011, but most political forces refuse to enter into an electoral or political alliance with it. Having won 26 seats in the NCA, Aridha Chaabia experienced an exodus, losing 11 MPs, some of which joined other parties such as Nida Tounes. Some of the MPs who left the parties accused Hamdi of autocracy, while others said they no longer wished to operate within a party whose leader fears returning to his home country. Hamdi lives in, and runs the party from, London, where he lives. Aridha Chaabia sued NCA members who broke away from the party, accusing them of betrayal of trust and demanding that they are sacked from parliament and replaced by other MPs. Hadhri Maamoudi, the secretary general of Aridha Chaabia, also condemned MPs' practice of "inter-party tourism" and described it as "betrayal." Aridha Chaabia is not the only Tunisian party to suffer from the phenomenon of members of the NCA moving between parties and blocs. Not even the ruling troika's Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (Ettakatol) and the Congress for the Republic (CPR) have been spared. Ettakatol has also called for the sacking of NCA members who change parties, saying these members gained the electorate's trust based on their original parties' platform and popularity of their original parties.