The Workers' Party (; ) is a communist party in

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

. Legalized only in 2011, it participates in the Popular Front coalition, which is represented in the

Assembly of the Representatives of the People The Assembly of the Representatives of the People ( ', ; ARP) is the lower house of the Parliament of Tunisia. The Assembly replaced the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia, Constituent Assembly and was first Tunisian parliamentary election, 2014, e ...

. The party's long-term leader is general secretary Hamma Hammami. Founded in 1986, the party was known as the Tunisian Workers' Communist Party (; , PCOT) until 2012. After the rename it remained a member of the

Hoxhaist Hoxhaism ( , ) is a variant of Marxism–Leninism developed in the late 1970s as a result of a schism in the anti-revisionist movement, namely between the Chinese Communist Party and the Party of Labour of Albania. The ideological dispute bet ...

International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle) The International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (; abbreviations: ICMLPO or CIPOML) is an international organization of Anti-revisionism (Marxism–Leninism), anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninis ...

History

The party was outlawed until the Tunisian Revolution, when in a failed attempt to shore up the state framework it and another banned parties were invited to participate in a

national unity government A national unity government, government of national unity (GNU), or national union government is a broad coalition government consisting of all parties (or all major parties) in the legislature, usually formed during a time of war or other na ...

. Subsequently, the party and other opposition elements refused this attempt to co-opt the ongoing revolution by installing a government composed at its senior levels by associates of the former regime. It was founded on 3 January 1986 and has a youth wing the ''Union of Communist Youth of Tunisia'' (UJCT).

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

reports that in 1998 five students were charged with belonging to PCOT and given 4-year prison sentences after student demonstrations. After their involvement in the uprising against

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisian Arabic: , ; 3 September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tun ...

, PCOT held their first conference as a legal party on 22–24 July, with up to 2000 attending. Removing the word "communist" from the party's name was among the topics debated. In the end, party spokesperson Abed Jabbar Bdouri stated the party decided "not to make any changes since we're currently too busy with the electoral campaign". In the 2011 Constituent Assembly election, the candidates of PCOT's electoral formation ran by the name "Revolutionary Alternative" ( ''; '') and won 3 of the 217 seats, in

Sfax Sfax ( ; , ) is a major port city in Tunisia, located southeast of Tunis. The city, founded in AD849 on the ruins of Taparura, is the capital of the Sfax Governorate (about 955,421 inhabitants in 2014), and a Mediterranean port. Sfax has a ...

Kairouan Kairouan (, ), also spelled El Qayrawān or Kairwan ( , ), is the capital of the Kairouan Governorate in Tunisia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city was founded by the Umayyads around 670, in the period of Caliph Mu'awiya (reigned 661� ...

and Siliana. Member Chrif Khraief has stated the party was dissatisfied with the result, as "3 seats in the CA doesn't reflect at all the real weight of the party on the streets"; Retrieved 29 November 2011 PCOT issued a statement condemning the use of political donations and electoral violations during the campaign. In July 2012, the PCOT decided to remove the word "communist" from its name to avoid the stereotype associated with this term.

References

External links

"Let Us Make the Awakening of the Movement our Central Task,"
''La Forge: Organ of the Communist Party of the Workers of France'' (April 1997) (Document released on PCOT's 11th anniversary).

La Forge: Organ of the Communist Party of the Workers of France (September 1997). *Hamma Hammami, Tunisian Communist Workers Party

(Tunisia, 15 January 2011). etrieved from MRZine 28 January 2011
Official Facebook page
{{ICMLPO (U&S) 1986 establishments in Tunisia Arab nationalism in Tunisia Arab socialist political parties Communist parties in Tunisia Formerly banned communist parties Formerly banned political parties in Tunisia Hoxhaist parties International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle) International Peoples' Assembly Pan-Arabist political parties Political parties established in 1986 Popular Front (Tunisia)