By AFP
TUNIS: Tunisia’s interim President Foued Mebazza on Monday fired Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi, the official news agency TAP reported without explanation.
“At the suggestion of Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi, interim President Foued Mebazaa decided to carry out a partial reshuffle of the government in which he named Habib Essid as interior minister,” the report said.
It gave no reason for the surprise sacking.
An accomplished jurist, Rajhi was appointed to the post on January 27 as part of the second government formed two weeks after a popular uprising deposed president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali — the first having been rejected for including too many members of the ousted regime.
Days later, hundreds of police and supporters of Ben Ali stormed the interior ministry threatening to kill Rajhi.
As soon as he took office Rajhi had fired dozens of top officials in the interior ministry, a symbol of Ben Ali’s repressive regime.
On March 7 Rajhi scrapped Tunisia’s feared political police who had rounded up thousands of political dissidents.
The same day Essebsi named yet a third government retaining Rajhi, who had won the sympathy of many Tunisians, with some bloggers referring to him as “Mr Clean” and the “man of the moment.”
Essid, 61, who has a degree in agronomy from the University of Minnesota in the United States, headed the cabinet of Tunisia’s agriculture ministry from 1993 to 1997 and that of the interior ministry from 1997 to 2001.
In 2004, he was the executive director of the Madrid-based International Olive Oil Council.
