Ahmed Qaaloul, advisor to the Speaker of Parliament and the Tunisian Ennahda Movement, Rached Ghannouchi, said that President Kais Saied “disavowed” his agreement with Ghannouchi to replace former Prime Minister Hisham al-Mashishi with a new prime minister.

Qaaloul told the private “Al-Zaytouna” channel, “Ghannouchi requested, in his capacity as Speaker of Parliament, a meeting with President Saeed, and after the meeting was approved, Ghannouchi canceled a television dialogue (in which he would address the president’s mistakes) as a kind of goodwill, and during the meeting, Saeed and Ghannouchi agreed to change the government. Al-Mashishi, and there was agreement on certain steps to change this government, but after that communication with the Carthage Palace was cut and the president went ahead with his program.”

Ghannouchi had met Saeed at the end of last June (a month before Saeed announced the exceptional measures), following mediation by former Minister Lotfi Zitoun, where Ghannouchi later confirmed that he had canceled a television interview with the private “Hannibal” channel, in which he was going to address “The president’s mistakes” mainly related to his “disruption of the ministerial reshuffle, as well as his obstruction of the Constitutional Court law.”

Riad Al-Shuaibi, Ghannouchi’s political advisor, previously confirmed to Al-Quds Al-Arabi that the movement rejects the recent decisions of President Qais Saeed, but welcomes the meeting between Ghannouchi and Saeed, which he considered will contribute to “the branch of confusion about the president’s intentions from the measures he took.”