Tunisia – Ennahdha Used Suspect Hires to Plant Sleeper Cells
A year after the discovery of the issue of jobs and suspicious appointments linked to the Ennahdha Movement, where investigations confirmed the employment of 47 thousand employees based on fake scientific certificates during the period of the rule of Ennahdha, the files of corruption that accumulated in the decade of the Brotherhood rule in Tunisia have resurfaced these days to include cases of falsification of scientific certificates, as the Tunisian government opened several cases in corruption and terrorism files belonging to the “black decade”, in response to calls to open an investigation in the appointments that took place in the past years.
Certificate validation
The growing calls came with the goal of opening up the files of suspicious appointments, especially from holders of higher university degrees who accuse the parties that led the country during the past years of opening the doors of the public office to their supporters and loyalists, without taking into consideration the criterion of efficiency. This was announced by Minister of Employment and Vocational Training and government spokesman Nasreddine Nsibi, who confirmed the start of the process of verifying the validity of all scientific certificates in all ministries, clarifying that there is a process of data exchange between all ministries, confirming that the inventory of scientific certificates is continuous, and he reported that about 15 files have been referred to the judiciary.
800,000 employees
Investigations revealed that 16 people from Kasserine governorate, in central Tunisia, were involved in forging scientific certificates in order to obtain jobs in a number of municipalities. The public prosecutor’s office in the Court of First Instance authorized minors to retain them after the charges of forgery were proven against them. Two months ago, the Tunisian authorities decided to imprison other employees who were working with forged school certificates; What brought to the fore then was the debate about many gaining government jobs in the education, financial, health, and other sectors through the forging of various scientific certificates over the past ten years. A year ago, investigations into the issue of jobs and suspicious appointments revealed the employment of 47,000 employees based on forged scientific certificates; More than 150 teachers and professors were referred for investigation, and it was found that the educational level did not rise to their professional level.
We also found that the certificates of frameworks, engineers and even ministers were forged, and it was also revealed that hundreds of those who left life continued to receive their salaries; This is a very serious crime, after the state treasury’s funds were looted through fraudulent operations. The president of the Association against Corruption confirmed that very few cases of the fraud of scientific certificates were referred to the judiciary, and that this had become “more brazen” in the black decade with the rule of the Ennahdha Movement; This contributed to the bankruptcy of the civil service and its being submerged by the secondments of employees, whose number increased from about 217,000 employees in the public sector to 800,000 in a few years; This has contributed to the inability of institutions to perform their tasks and to their bankruptcy.
Accusations of “Ennahdha”
For their part, observers confirmed that all the fingers in this file are on Ennahdha, which, as soon as it took over the reins of power in Tunisia, appointed a large number of its followers and supporters and its bases in various departments and institutions; Exploiting the provisions of the legislative amnesty decree to recruit its supporters for the purpose of electoral polarization, Tunisian opposition parties strongly accuse the appointment of leading figures of Ennahdha in public and local administrations, and accused the party headed by Rached Ghannouchi of continuing to carry out its programs “with the aim of controlling the details of the state, by imposing its members in the higher decision-making positions of the government,” noting that suspicious appointments in Tunisia did not include only ordinary jobs; It included the presidency of the government and the presidency of the republic, as well as governors, mayors and high officials in ministries and regional and municipal administrations. The unemployment rate is now 18.4%, and the number has doubled compared to 2010.
