20110123
reuters

TUNIS (Reuters) - Protesters from Tunisia's poor rural heartlands demonstrated in the capital on Sunday to demand that the revolution they started should now sweep the remnants of the fallen president's old guard from power.

A week after Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi took the reins of an interim coalition following the overthrow of veteran strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, he and other former loyalists of the feared ruling party face mounting pressure to step down.

Quite what shape an eventual popular leadership might take is unclear. Formal opposition parties exist but are not well known after decades of oppression. A hitherto banned Islamist party has called for early elections and may find ready support.

For days, protesters have gathered at the premier's office, limited in numbers but tolerated by policemen anxious for their own futures after Ben Ali. The demonstrators enjoy wider support among a population that is unused to free political expression.

On Sunday, amid a weekend calm, hundreds of people who had been driven to the capital in a "freedom caravan" surrounded Ghannouchi's building in central Tunis. Many were from Sidi Bouzid, the bleak central city where the "Jasmine Revolution" was sparked a month ago by one despairing young man's suicide.

"We are marginalised. Our land is owned by the government. We have nothing," said Mahfouzi Chouki from near the city, which lies 300 km (200 miles) south of Tunis and a world away from the opulent coastal resorts favoured by Ben Ali's elite.

Some new arrivals brought food and bedding. They planned to defy a curfew to camp out and press home their demands.

"We came from Sidi Bouzid, from Kairouan, from Gefsa ... to bring our voice to the capital," said one man, Safi Adel.