[Al Ahram] The Tunisian parliament said the procedures for withdrawing confidence from its speaker and the Islamist Ennahda Party's leader Rached al-Ghannouchi will begin on Thursday.
The meeting was expected to be held on Wednesday, but it was postponed for "unknown reasons", reported Russia Today (RT) on the basis of information gained from local news sources.
Opposition MPs officially submitted a request to hold a vote of no-confidence against al-Ghannouchi last Thursday after securing the support of 73 MPs, the number of backers required to move forward with the process.
Yet, to remove al-Ghannouchi from his post, they need to get the votes of 109 MPs in the 217-seat parliament.
Earlier this month, parliamentary sources in Tunisia, the satellite TV channel al-Arabiya reported, said that political forces were "fed up with al-Ghannouchi’s suspicious moves and practices," including his "attempt to implement the Moslem Brüderbund agenda" in Tunisia, accusing him of seeking to expand his authority by disregarding the president.
The opposition believes that a conflict of interest exists between al-Ghannouchi’s posts as Ennahda’s leader and speaker of parliament.
The opposition includes al-Kotla al-Democrateya Party (40 MPs), Tahya Tounes, al-Islah al-Watani (15), al-Kotla al-Wataneya (nine) and the Free Destourian Party (17).
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