Bahrain: Fired municipal representatives now stopped from working in Education

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The Ministry of Education has stopped a second Municipal Representative, who was sacked from his position in response to support for democratic reforms, from working in the education sector.Sadiq Rabea, a municipal representative who had been elected with the highest number of votes, was fired along with four other municipal representatives in the Government’s vengeful campaign against dissidents demanding democratic transition following the eruption of the uprising on February 14th 2011. Now the Education Ministry has followed on the same path by arbitrarily and illegally dismissing him from teaching.The Education Ministry had previously dismissed Abdul Ridha Zuhair, a municipal representative too, for the same illegal reasons Rabea had been dismissed for. The Ministry says both did not file a request to be reinstated in their jobs at the Ministry before they had been elected, however, the representatives along with official parties were waiting for the court’s procedures to finish.The Government’s targeting of municipal representatives proves that state institutions are used to punish dissidents.Al Wefaq’s municipal bloc had stressed that the dismissal of five municipal representatives from the seats they had won in the elections is a disgraceful decision that illustrates the dictatorship and tyranny in Bahrain. All dismissed workers and employees have a humanitarian right to be reinstated in their jobs because the true motive behind the dismisshals was retaliation.Al Wefaq’s bloc, which both Rabea and Zuhair are part of, had won 64% of votes when first elected, with their dismissals not only being unfair but deeply undemocratic./129