Tunisia

Country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, bounded southeast by Libya and west by Algeria.

Government

Tunisia has a presidential political system, dominated by a ruling political party. The 1959 constitution, as amended in 2002, provides for a president, who is both head of state and government, elected by universal suffrage for a five-year term. The president can serve up to five terms. The president appoints a prime minister and a council of ministers. There is a single-chamber legislature or national assembly, the 189-member chamber of deputies (Majlis al-Nuwaab), also directly elected for a five-year term, with 20% of the seats reserved for opposition parties. Islamic radical opposition parties are not allowed to operate. Other parties are, but dissent is tightly controlled, as is the media. There is an underground radical Islamic opposition movement.

History

Founded as Carthage by the Phoenicians in the 8th century BC, Tunisia was under Arab rule from the 7th century AD until it became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1574. It harboured the Barbary Coast pirates until the 19th century. It became a French protectorate in 1883.

The Destour Socialist Party (PSD), founded in 1934 by Habib Bourguiba, led Tunisia's campaign for independence from France. The country achieved internal self-government in 1955 and full independence in 1956, with Bourguiba as prime minister. A year later the monarchy was abolished, and Tunisia became a republic, with Bourguiba as president. A new constitution was adopted in 1959, and the first national assembly elected. After an initial failed policy of economic collectivization, private enterprise was encouraged and industries developed. Islamic fundamentalism was suppressed and women given greater equality than in other Arab states.

Bourguiba was made president for life in 1975. Between 1963 and 1981 the PSD was the only legally recognized party, but others were subsequently formed. In November 1986 the PSD won all the assembly seats, while other parties boycotted the elections.

Foreign affairs

President Bourguiba followed a distinctive foreign policy, establishing links with the Western powers, including the USA, but joining other Arab states in condemning the US-inspired Egypt–Israel treaty. He allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization to use Tunis as its headquarters, provoking an Israeli attack in 1985 and straining relations with the USA. Diplomatic links with Libya were severed in 1985, and not restored until 1988. Bourguiba was non-militarist, arguing that Tunisia could not afford to maintain a high level of defence spending.

Ousting of Bourguiba

Bourguiba's firm and paternalistic rule, and his long period in Tunisian politics, made him a national legend. However, in November 1987 the 84-year-old president was deposed and replaced by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a former head of national security and the current prime minister, on the grounds that Bourguiba was medically unfit to continue in office. Another factor was the growing threat the country faced from the Islamic fundamentalist al-Nahda party, which aimed to turn Tunisia into an Islamic state.

In July 1988, a number of significant constitutional changes were announced, suggesting Tunisia might move to more pluralist politics, but in the April 1989 elections, the renamed PSD, now the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), won all the assembly seats.

Crackdown on Islamic militants

Ben Ali continued with his predecessors pro-Western foreign policy. This led, during the 1991 Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, to large anti-US protests in Tunisia. There followed, in the early 1990s, a government crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists and sympathizers. This repression drew criticism from the West.

However, Ben Ali was re-elected president, as the only candidate, in March 1994, and the RCD won more than 90% of the vote in the assembly elections.

The 1990s saw strong economic growth, averaging 5% a year, which raised living standards. However, there was continued government repression and alleged human-rights abuses, particularly of Islamic activists. In November 1999, a month before elections, several hundred political prisoners were released. Ben Ali was re-elected president and appointed as interior minister, Abdallah Kallel, who had taken a hard line against Islamists in the early 1990s.

Constitutional change allows Ben Ali a further term

In April 2002 the international Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda was behind a suicide bombing of a synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba which killed 21 people, 14 of them German tourists.

Controversially, in 2002, the constitution was amended to allow Ben Ali to further terms as president. He won the October 2004 election, and a fourth term, with 94% of the vote, defeating three challengers. The RCD won 80% of the seats in the enlarged legislature, the chamber of deputies.

Tunisia (redirected from Tounes)