PROFILE - Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia’s post-Arab Spring president

By Saida Sharaf al-Din

TUNIS, Tunisia (AA) – Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia's first democratically elected president in the post-Arab Spring era, died on Thursday, age 92, after being admitted to the hospital for unspecified serious medical problems.

Essebsi, in power since December 2014, has been a key political player in the North African state for several decades in a variety of positions, most notably national security chief, interior minister, defense minister, and foreign minister.

Born in 1926, Essebsi took power in a changed political landscape, after Tunisia witnessed the popular revolution known as the Arab Spring. The uprisings toppled then-President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who later ended up in Saudi Arabia, avoiding a life sentence given in absentia for ordering security forces to fire on unarmed demonstrators.

During the 1950s, when Tunisia still was under French colonial occupation, Essebsi, a young student in Paris, took part in the Tunisian national struggle against the occupation alongside activists of the New Constitutional Liberal Party.

After returning home to Tunisia, he grew closer to the leader of the national movement at that time, Habib Bourguiba, who first recognized him when they both were in France.

-Post independence

After Tunisia’s independence in 1956, Essebsi held many top posts in the government in social affairs, regional administration, and tourism.

But his career really took off in the Interior Ministry, where he was appointed director of national security in 1963 during the tenure of President Habib Bourguiba.

As security chief, Essebsi faced criticism from right-wing activists for allegedly torturing detainees during interrogation.

Still under Bourguiba, in 1969 he became defense minister, and the next year took the important post of Tunisia’s ambassador to France.

In 1981, Essebsi was appointed Tunisia’s foreign minister.

Two years after the overthrow of President Bourguiba, in 1989, Essebsi was elected a member of parliament, and served as parliament speaker in 1990-1991 under new President Ben Ali.

-Brief premiership, then presidency

After a long absence from the political scene, Essebsi returned to politics as prime minister during the brief transitional government formed after Ben Ali was ousted in the 2011 revolution.

But within months, after the Tunisian polls of October 2011, he left the premier’s post, as the Ennahda Movement took power in the country.

He founded the Nidaa Tounes party, which managed to later win the country’s first parliamentary polls leading to a permanent parliament in the post-Ben Ali era.

In September 2014, Essebsi officially presented his candidacy for the first presidential elections since the 2011 revolution. He won the second round of the polls in December 2014 with 55.68%, beating former President Moncef Marzouki's 44.32%.

During Essebsi's presidency, he took controversial stances on a number of sensitive social topics, including a family inheritance policy at odds with Islamic law, as well as legalizing marriages between Tunisian Muslim women and non-Muslim men, contrary to Islamic religious jurisprudence.