Tunisian president Essebsi dies

Mahmud Mohamadi

Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi, one of the oldest leaders at the international stage, died Thursday, after a long political career and struggle for the independence of his country.

Essebsi assumed a large number of positions, including this of an advisor to the late Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba. He became Tunisia’s president in 2014.

The Tunisian president declared news of Essebsi’s death on its Facebook page. It said the Tunisian leader died at the age of 92 at a military hospital in Tunisian capital, Tunis.

Biography

Essebsi was born in the northern Tunisian town of Sidi Bou Said in 1926. He worked as a lawyer before starting a political career, during which he took over the foreign affairs portfolio. Essebsi also worked as the parliament speaker under the ex-Tunisian president Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

He studied law at the University of Sorbonne. He then returned to Tunisia to work as a lawyer. He defended political activists who struggled against the French occupation of Tunisia.

Between 1956 and 1986, Essebsi assumed important positions, including the minister of the interior, the minister of defense, the minister of foreign affairs and Tunisia’s ambassador in Paris and Bonne.

In 1993, Essebsi became the Tunisian parliament speaker for a year. He then worked as a lawyer for 20 years.

In 2011, Essebsi was appointed as the prime minister of Tunisia. This was only weeks after the uprising the ended the Ben Ali autocracy. His government oversaw Tunisia’s first free and democratic constituent assembly elections, which was won by Ennahda Movement, an ideological offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Struggle against Islamists

In June 2012, Essebsi founded the Nidaa Tounes Movement. A year later, Tunisia decided to hold its presidential elections in 2014.

Essebsi had been the most outstanding political figure in Tunisia since 2012. His country was on the cusp of civil war, especially between the secularists and the Islamists. He succeeded, however, in avoiding this war by agreeing with the Islamist Ennahda Movement on forming a government of technocrats and drafting a modern constitution.

The same agreement qualified Tunisia’s political forces for the Noble Peace Prize in 2015.

Essebsi won the 2014 presidential elections, becoming the oldest head of state in the world after the Queen of Britain.

Nonetheless, Essebsi formed a coalition government in which Ennahda participated.