In the aftermath of the death of Tunisia’s fifth President, Beji Caid Essebsi, a reflection on his life, his rule and his legacy is probably the best way to foresee the impact of his loss on Tunisia’s political system.
Born to a beylical aristocratic family in 1926, Beji Caid Essebsi attended the elitist Sadiki College in Tunis. After his graduation from the Paris Law Faculty (Sorbonne), he quickly integrated the highest circles of the post-colonial Tunisian state. The thirty years of political experience he spent within the closest circles of Habib Bourguiba made of him a disciple of Tunisia’s first president.
After disappearing from the political scene in the early 1990s, under Ben Ali’s rule, he came back to the public sphere in February 2011, two months after the beginning of the revolution. Since his first public appearance, Essebsi managed to use the image of Bourguiba to gain the sympathy of the elderly, nostalgic to the pre-Ben Ali era as well as an important section of Tunisia’s youth for whom the image of Bourguiba was shaped by the glorifying narrative transmitted from one generation to another.
