Tunisian Islamist Chief Warns against 'Chaos'

Rached Ghannouchi, who heads Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, warned on Friday, three days ahead of the revolution's second anniversary, against the country sliding into chaos amid social unrest.

"Several countries have succeeded in ousting regimes but not then installing a democratic state because liberties become corrupted, as in Somalia," the Ennahda chief told a gathering of supporters in the capital's Raoued suburb.

"We do not want Tunisia to become like Somalia, where revolution turned into chaos."

Ghannouchi said social grievances that exploded into violence on Thursday in the southern town of Ben Guerdane and at Siliana in the northwest last month, injuring 300 people, "do not honor the revolution -- they threaten it."

There is ongoing social discontent in Tunisia two years after the uprising that overthrew ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011, with strikes and protests often degenerating into violence.

Unemployment and tough living conditions were key factors behind the revolt that touched off the Arab Spring, whose second anniversary will be celebrated on Monday.

Violent attacks by Islamists and a political impasse over the new constitution also continue to threaten the country's stability.

Ennahda heads a government in coalition with two secular center-right parties after winning October 2011 elections to the Constituent Assembly.

But the parliament has made little progress in drafting a new constitution and electoral law, with the process repeatedly hampered by differences between Islamists and secularists within the legislative body.