UAE Seeking to Bribe Tunisian Officials into Defection from Gov’t

The UAE has offered to pay $250,000 to every Tunisian official who resigns from his or her post in the Islamist government of the Ennahda Party, a move in the chain of the measures taken by Saudi Arabia and and the UAE to push back the tides of Arab Spring by toppling the newly established popular governments in the region.
“Through its communication channels in Tunisia, the UAE has promised the members of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly to pay them 400,000 dinars (equal to USD250,000) in case they resign from their posts and membership in the Assembly,” a Tunisian lawmaker, who asked to remain unnamed due to security reasons, told FNA Saturday.

The legislator said the UAE seeks to repeat the same scenario that was staged against the Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood) government in Egypt to topple the Tunisian government led by the Ennahda Party.

Nasser al-Barahemi, a resigned member of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly, also confirmed the above, and said, “The UAE has not sufficed to this and has promised to reinstate those people (who accept to resign their posts in the Constitution Assembly and government) to political posts in future in addition to above-mentioned funds.”

Another Tunisian official had told FNA last week that the UAE is spending billions of dollars to stage protest rallies against Tunisia’s ruling Ennahda Party and to topple the Arab country’s President, Moncef Marzouki.

The official, who also asked to remain anonymous, told FNA that the United Arab Emirates is making billions of dollars of investment in the form of financial and logistical aids to the Tunisian opposition to help topple the Arab country’s moderate Islamist government which ascended to power through the country’s first democratic elections in decades after popular protests resulted in the fall of long-time dictator Bin Ali.

“The UAE is trying to repeat the scenario of Egypt which resulted in the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Mursi,” the official said on October 26.

He cautioned that the UAE has already supplied the Tunisian opposition forces with huge financial supports.

In late July, the Tunisian security forces arrested two UAE nationals who had secretly met with leaders of Tunisia’s “Tamarod (Rebellion)” movement. The security forces seized large sums of money, documents and booklets from them where they had explained about the techniques for holding protest rallies and staging sit-ins.

The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, have been regarded as West’s main allies in the Middle-East and they have made efforts and invested large sums to topple the popular governments which have ascended to power through the revolutions which jolted large parts of the Middle-East around three years ago.

Most of these efforts have concentrated on Egypt and Tunisia as the first two nations which inspired and encouraged the rest of the Arab world to stand up to their totalitarian regimes.

In July, Tunisia’s Tamarod movement launched a petition to dissolve the country’s parliament, in a campaign similar to the one in Egypt that led to the ouster of President Mohammed Mursi.

“We don’t want any support from the political parties to protect our credibility,” Mohammed Bennour, one of the Tamarod movement organizers said.

Bennour’s comments came shortly after head of the ruling Ennahda party Rached Ghannouchi dismissed suggestions that the massive protests in Egypt that ousted President Mohammed Mursi might be repeated in Tunisia.

In August, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the recent power transfer in Egypt a military coup sponsored by Saudi Arabia and an unforgivable treachery by the Wahhabi rulers in Riyadh.

The Turkish prime minister made the remarks in a meeting on August 13 attended by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Interior Minister Muammer Guler, National Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, and Head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) Hakan Fidan.

“This act of treason by the Wahhabi rulers of Saudi Arabia is a poisonous and unfair sword used against the Muslim World which made Turkey’s plans for the Middle East to fall flat,” Erdogan said at the meeting.

The Turkish prime minister called on his political and security teams to prepare a list of possible actions and plans to make Saudi Arabia withdraw from its policies in Egypt.