First of all, our party intends to remain in opposition, and not to enter the next government, although two of our allies in the Alliance for Citizenship and Equality plan to take part in a government of national unity (namely the Ettajdid Movement and the Democratic Forum).

[Editor’s note: The Mouvement Ettitjad (Renewal Movement) emerged from the Tunisian Communist Party, which dissolved in the early 1990s. Ahmed Brahim, the secretary-general of the Ettajdid won support from the Workers Communist Party of Tunisia and the Socialist Party – both clandestine – for the presidency in 2009.]

Our tasks:

1) To neutralise the criminal gangs which are indulging in plunder and aggression, and which are like a kind of “tontons macoutes” of the old regime;

2) To support the creation in each district of Citizens’ Committees for Civic Defence to defend people and property from these “tontons macoutes”

3) To require the return of the police force and the army to their barracks as soon as possible, and the end of the curfew and the state of emergency;

4) To create a commission of inquiry to locate the persons who were responsible for the use of live rounds [against civilians during the uprising];

5) To create a commission of inquiry with the power to expropriate the beneficiaries of corruption and illicit enrichment;

6) To create a national commission on total reform of the electoral code, the press code and the law concerning political parties;

7) To secure the legalisation of the Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party and other civil organisations.

Tunis, January 15, 2011.

Statement by Khaled Falah, Tunisian Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party