TUNISIA’S SAIED MOVES REVOLUTION ANNIVERSARY

TUNIS, Tunisia: Tunisia’s President Kais Saied said on Thursday (Friday in Manila) he would move the official anniversary of the country’s revolution, a symbolic shift indicating that the revolt is unfinished. Tunisia’s uprising broke out on Dec. 17, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a vegetable salesman angered by police harassment, set himself ablaze in the marginalized rural town of Sidi Bouzid. Four weeks later, after vast nationwide protests, veteran dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled into exile on January 14, which later became an official day of remembrance and a public holiday. But Saied told his Cabinet on Thursday that he would order the holiday moved to December 17, the day “the revolutionary explosion burst out of Sidi Bouzid.”“Unfortunately, the revolution was usurped,” he added. “The people were even prevented from expressing their desires and slogans.” Saied, who sacked the government and seized wide-ranging powers on July 25, wants to radically change the form of Tunisian governance and sees the revolution as a process that was still underway.