The press ‘blew it out of proportion’

Rachid al-Ghannouchi with his daughter Soumaya Tunis – Azhaar al Jarboui Tunisian Minister of Foreign Affairs Rafiq Bin Abdul Salam defended his wife Soumaya al-Ghannouchi, daughter of Ennahda leader Rachid al-Ghannouchi, after she posted a message on Facebook to the Tunisian opposition on October 23. Abdul Salam said: “My wife is free to express her opinions; no one can impose their ideologies over her by force. Not even her father or husband.” He added that it is not new to her as she used to regularly write a column in the British newspaper The Guardian. He said that they sometimes disagree about the content of her writings, but that he will never deny her right to write and her freedom of expression. Soumaya al-Ghannouchi wrote on her Facebook page: “Every election you are miserable, hopeless and desperate,” and she invited the “losers in the elections to mourn their luck for the worst day of their lives.” She added that October 23 would reveal their misfit. Rachid al-Ghannouchi’s daughter said that the opposition was an “isolated and noisy minority with little social presence.”   She accused the opposition of inciting violence. The message of the leader’s daughter offended many in the opposition. Writer Olfa Youssof addressed Soumaya al-Ghannouchi in response to her message, saying that the leftists are disappointed because of their alliance with Ennahda movement. The Tunisian writer said the Tunisian people are ignorant and sexually oppressed. The message and the verbal violence between politicians is now a risky slide towards a new form of political violence which several analysts considered inappropriate to the new image of Tunisia, especially after a year of the first free and fair democratic elections in its history.