Word: parliament
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...under pressure from his Western allies, Ben Ali set aside 20% of seats in parliament for opposition parties. The multiparty system is "the government's décor, to show the world it tolerates opposition parties," says Eric Goldstein, Middle East and North Africa research director for Human Rights Watch. "But it does its utmost to silence and marginalize them...
...opposition figure with intimate experience of these pressures is activist Ahmed Néjib Chebbi, founder of the Progressive Democratic Party, Tunisia's most outspoken opposition party, which has no seats in parliament. When TIME interviewed him in Tunis, Chebbi, 64, was about to begin a hunger strike to protest an eviction order from his party headquarters, which he said was one of the few gathering places for activists. Although the party is legal, its members say it is shut out of parliament by being starved of exposure. "In 15 years as head of the party I've had eight...
...Tunis last July. He told Ben Ali he was concerned about the arrest of a prominent lawyer, Mohammed Abbou, on what some regarded as dubious charges of assaulting a colleague and defaming the judiciary. Abbou was freed shortly after, ending two years in jail. In late October, the European Parliament's human-rights committee head, Hélène Flautre, visited Chebbi in the fourth week of his hunger strike, and told reporters that Tunisia's policies were "unbearable." Days later, Ben Ali revoked the eviction order against Chebbi's political party, and he ended his hunger strike...
...French members of Sarkozy's conservative-dominated parliament passed an amendment to the 2008 budget Tuesday, lifting the president's annual salary from $146,000 to $346,000. The move seeks to clarify the complicated, multi-sourced arrangement under which French Presidents have been paid. Indeed, even as leftist opponents sought to express indignation over the appearance of the rightist legislators sneaking a sweetheart raise to their leader, Sarkozy himself was defiantly unapologetic about the raise or its motives. "I want transparency," Sarkozy declared during a visit in Corsica, referring to the convoluted collection of revenues like advances on paid...
...since the Sept. 16 shootings to close the loopholes in the law. At issue is Order 17, a law signed by L. Paul Bremer in 2004, that places contractors effectively beyond the reach of Iraqi courts. A draft law which would reverse that order was handed to the Iraqi parliament for consideration on Tuesday, said Iraqi spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh...