Tunisia’s first democratic leader held office until end
TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, the North African country’s first democratically elected leader and a symbol of the generation of Tunisians who shook off French rule in the 1950s, has died. He was 92.
In a hasty ceremony hours after Essebsi died, the leader of parliament took over Thursday as interim president pending new elections. However, Essebsi’s death while still in office could lead to new power struggles in the only country to emerge from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings with a functioning democracy and relative stability.
Essebsi died Thursday at the Tunis military hospital, and a funeral is planned Saturday. The government declared seven days of mourning, as condolences poured in from several Arab countries.
Heir to Tunisia’s founding father, Essebsi emerged from retirement at age 88 to win office in 2014 in the wake of the country’s Arab Spring revolt. He presented his centrist Nida Tounes movement as a bulwark against rising Islamic fundamentalism and against the political chaos that rocked Tunisia after the “jasmine revolution” overthrew a longtime dictator and unleashed similar protests for democracy throughout the region.
Essebsi was seen as a unifying figure, but was ultimately unable to bring prosperity or lasting calm to a country beset by economic crises and sporadic deadly terror attacks.
Under Tunisia’s constitution, the president of the parliament, Mohamed Ennaceur, should assume the presidency for 45 to 90 days while a new election is organized.
First, the Constitutional Court was supposed to confirm that the presidency is vacant. However, the court itself doesn’t exist yet, because lawmakers disagree over who its members should be. That could raise questions about the legitimacy of Ennaceur’s leadership.
In a brief speech, Ennaceur called on Tunisians “to strengthen your unity and solidarity so that the country can pursue its march toward progress.”
Most of Essebsi’s political career came well before the Arab Spring uprisings, and he outlived most of his peers in Tunisia’s independence generation.
Born Nov. 29, 1926, when Tunisia was a French protectorate, Essebsi entered politics in the 1940s and trained as a lawyer in Paris. But his name is most associated with Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba, who built up the country and educated its people yet brooked little opposition.