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The president of Tunisia is the head of state of Tunisia, directly elected to a five-year term by the people. The officeholder leads the executive branch of the Tunisian government along with the prime minister and is the commander-in-chief of the Tunisian Armed Forces.
Since the office was established in 1957, Five men have served as president. The seventh and current president is Kais Saied since 23 October 2019. There are currently three living former presidents. The most recent former president to die was Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on 19 September 2019.
The presidency of Mohamed Ennaceur, who assumed the office as acting president following the death of incumbent president Beji Caid Essebsi, was the shortest in Tunisian history (90 days). Habib Bourguiba, the inaugural holder, served the longest, over thirty years (1957–1987), before he was removed from office by his prime minister Ben Ali, on 7 November 1987. Since the ratification of the Tunisian Constitution in 2014, no person may be elected president more than twice.
Of those who have served as the nation's president, only one died in office of natural causes (Beji Caid Essebsi), two were removed from office (Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali) and two assumed the office as acting presidents (Fouad Mebazaa and Mohamed Ennaceur).
Tunisia has had seven presidents since the proclamation of the republic on 25 July 1957:
No. | Portrait | Name (Birth–Death) | Term of office | Party | Election | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) | 25 July 1957 – 7 November 1987 | Neo-Destour | Interim | Parliament abolished the monarchy and designated Prime Minister Bourguiba as interim president. | ||
1959 | Bourguiba won the first presidential election in Tunisia's history. | ||||||
SDP | 1964 | Bourguiba won his second presidential term. | |||||
1969 | Bourguiba won his third and last presidential term according to the constitution. | ||||||
1974 | After this election, Bourguiba proclaimed himself president for life. | ||||||
2 | Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1936–2019) | 7 November 1987 – 14 January 2011 | SDP | Interim | Following the 1987 coup d'état, Prime Minister Ben Ali took office as interim president. | ||
DCR | 1989 | Ben Ali won the first presidential election in 15 years. | |||||
1994 | Ben Ali won his second presidential term. | ||||||
1999 | Ben Ali won his third presidential term and Tunisia's first pluralist presidential election. | ||||||
2004 | Ben Ali won his fourth presidential term after being allowed according to the 2002 constitutional referendum. | ||||||
2009 | Ben Ali won his fifth and last presidential term before being deposed. [1] | ||||||
3 | Fouad Mebazaa (b. 1933) | 15 January 2011 – 13 December 2011 | DCR [a] | Interim | Mebazaa, as speaker of Parliament, became interim president following the removal of Ben Ali by Constitutional Council. | ||
Independent | Mebazaa's term was extended until the election of a Constituent Assembly after the constitution was repealed. | ||||||
4 | Moncef Marzouki (b. 1945) | 13 December 2011 – 31 December 2014 | CFR | 2011 | Marzouki was not elected directly, but was elected temporarily by the Constituent Assembly until the next election. | ||
5 | Beji Caid Essebsi (1926–2019) | 31 December 2014 – 25 July 2019 † | Nidaa Tounes | 2014 | Essebsi won the first two-round presidential election, and was the first president to die in office. | ||
6 | Mohamed Ennaceur (b. 1934) | 25 July 2019 – 23 October 2019 | Nidaa Tounes | Interim | Ennaceur, as speaker of Parliament, became interim president following the death of President Beji Caid Essebsi. | ||
7 [b] | Kais Saied (b. 1958) | 23 October 2019 – Incumbent | Independent | 2019 | Saied won the first presidential election in which a presidential debate was held. | ||
2024 |
Rank | President | Time in office |
---|---|---|
1 | Habib Bourguiba | 30 years, 105 days |
2 | Zine El Abidine Ben Ali | 23 years, 68 days |
3 | Beji Caid Essebsi | 4 years, 206 days |
4 | Kais Saied | 5 years, 41 days |
5 | Moncef Marzouki | 3 years, 18 days |
6 | Fouad Mebazaa (Acting President) | 332 days |
7 | Mohamed Ennaceur (Acting President) | 90 days |
Mohamed Ghannouchi is a Tunisian politician who was Prime Minister of Tunisia from 1999 to 2011. Regarded as a technocrat, Ghannouchi was a long-standing figure in the Tunisian government under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He also served as the President of Tunisia from 14 to 15 January 2011, holding the powers and duties of the office nominally for the absent President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had fled the country due to the 2011 revolution. On 15 January 2011 the presidency was declared vacant by the Constitutional Court and Ben Ali's term was officially terminated, leading to Speaker of Parliament Fouad Mebazaa taking office as Acting President. Ghannouchi stayed on as prime minister for six more weeks after Ben Ali's overthrow before himself resigning.
The president of Tunisia, officially the president of the Republic of Tunisia, is the head of state since the creation of the position on 25 July 1957. In this capacity, he exercises executive power with the assistance of a government headed by the prime minister in a presidential system. According to Article 87 of the 2022 Constitution, he is the commander-in-chief of the Tunisian Armed Forces. Under the Constitution, the president is elected by direct universal suffrage for a term of five years, renewable once.
In its modern history, Tunisia is a sovereign republic, officially called the Republic of Tunisia. Tunisia has over ten million citizens, almost all of Arab-Berber descent. The Mediterranean Sea is to the north and east, Libya to the southeast, and Algeria to the west. Tunis is the capital and the largest city ; it is located near the ancient site of the city of Carthage.
Fouad Mebazaa is a Tunisian politician who was the acting president of Tunisia from 15 January 2011 to 13 December 2011. He was active in Neo Destour prior to Tunisian independence, served as Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Public Health, and Minister of Culture and Information, and was Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of Tunisia from 1991 to 2011.
Presidential elections were held in Tunisia on 23 November 2014, a month after parliamentary elections. They were the first free and fair presidential elections since the country gained independence in 1956, and the first direct presidential elections after the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 and the adoption of a new Constitution in January 2014.
Carthage Palace is the presidential palace of Tunisia, and the official residence and seat of the President of Tunisia. It is located along the Mediterranean Sea at the current city of Carthage, near the archaeological site of the ancient city, fifteen kilometers from Tunis. A house by Le Corbusier sits within the site.
Mohamed Moncef Marzouki is a Tunisian politician who served as the fifth president of Tunisia from 2011 to 2014. Through his career he has been a human rights activist, physician and politician. On 12 December 2011, he was elected President of Tunisia by the Constituent Assembly.
Beji Caid Essebsi served as the fifth president of Tunisia from 31 December 2014 until his death on 25 July 2019. Previously, he served as minister of foreign affairs from 1981 to 1986 and prime minister from February to December 2011.
During the Tunisian Revolution President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia on 14 January 2011 Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi then briefly took over as Acting President. On the morning of 15 January 2011 Ghannouchi had handed over the presidency to Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Fouad Mebazaa, This was done after the head of Tunisia's Constitutional Council, Fethi Abdennadher declared that Ghannouchi did not have right to power and confirmed Fouad Mebazaa as acting president under Article 57 of the 1959 Constitution. Ghannouchi returning to his previous position as prime minister was confirmed as prime minister by Mebazaa and formed a new national unity government on 17 January 2011 that included members of opposition parties, civil society representatives, and even a blogger who only a week previous had been imprisoned by the regime of the deposed president. On 27 February 2011 the government was dissolved and replaced by a new government led by Beji Caid Essebsi.
Noureddine Bhiri is a Tunisian politician. He served as the Minister of Justice under Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.
Ellougik Essiyasi or The political logic is a Tunisian satirical latex puppet show broadcast on Ettounisya TV. It's inspired by the French show Les guignols de l'info, which in turn is derived from the British satirical puppet show Spitting Image, and presented by Taoufik Labidi
Nidaa Tounes is a big tent secularist political party in Tunisia. After being founded in 2012, the party won a plurality of seats in the October 2014 parliamentary election. The party's founding leader Beji Caid Essebsi was elected President of Tunisia in the 2014 presidential election.
Parliamentary elections were held in Tunisia on 26 October 2014. Campaigning started on 4 October 2014. They were the first free regular legislative elections since independence in 1956, and the first elections held following the adoption of the new constitution in January 2014, which created a 217-seat Assembly of the Representatives of the People. According to preliminary results, Nidaa Tounes gained a plurality of votes, winning 85 seats in the 217-seat parliament, beating the Ennahda Movement and many smaller parties.
Mokhtar Yahyaoui was a human rights activist and a Tunisian judge. He was opposed to the system of former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Yahyaoui was born on June 1, 1952, in the village of Ksar Hadada in southern Tunisia, and died on September 22, 2015, in Teskrayah in the village of Ghazaleh from the region of Bizerte.
Mohamed Ennaceur is a Tunisian politician who served as the acting president of Tunisia for 91 days, from President Beji Caid Essebsi's death on 25 July 2019 until he handed over the presidency to Kais Saied as the winner of the 2019 Tunisian presidential election on 23 October 2019. Since 2014, he has also been the President of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People and leader of the governing Nidaa Tounes party. Previously, he served as Minister of Social Affairs in the 1970s and 1980s under President Habib Bourguiba and again in 2011 in the transitional Ghannouchi and Essebsi governments.
Events in the year 2019 in Tunisia.
Ali Ben Salem or Ali Kchouk was a Tunisian human rights activist and anti-colonialist, born in Bizerte. He was an opponent of the regimes of Presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Ali Ben Salem was considered the oldest human rights activist in Tunisia. While he was the president of the Bizertine section of the Tunisian Human Rights League, he co-founded the National Council for Freedoms and the Association against Torture in Tunisia.
Hédi Mabrouk was a Tunisian statesman, diplomat and politician. After serving as governor of different provinces between 1956 and 1962 he headed various state-owned companies. He was the ambassador of Tunisia to France from 1973 to 1985 and the minister of foreign affairs for one year between 1986 and 1987. He was the last foreign minister of the Habib Bourguiba era and also, was also one of his allies.
The National Order of Merit is a state award of the Republic of Tunisia.