(Newser)
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Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali announced his resignation today, making good on his promise to step down if he failed to resolve the country's political crisis. "I promised and assured that, in the event that my initiative failed, I would resign as head of the government, and that is what I have done," Jebali said on state-run TV today after meeting with President Moncef Marzouki, the Daily Star reports.
The move follows Standard & Poor's announcement that it would downgrade the country's credit rating because of constant instability, the AP reports. The country, which kicked off the Arab Spring, has been in turmoil ever since the assassination two weeks ago of opposition leader Chokri Belaid. Jebali had been trying to form a new, non-partisan coalition of technocrats, but those efforts collapsed last night, when his Islamist Ennahda party failed to sign on, the BBC explains. But Jebali insisted that the failure "does not mean the failure of Tunisia or the failure of the revolution."
