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Mr.Bouzekri Chakroune is a long-time writer for numerous dailies, weekly and monthly magazines since 2002. As an independent researcher, he is writing on a large variety of topics related to political, literary profiles, cultural and international issues. Mr. Bouzekri Chakroune is the author of a political-philosophical essay on Cosmopolitanism he wrote in French under the title A la recherche d’une identité cosmopolite ( In Search of A Cosmopolitan Identity) in 1991, recently published in Germany With Omniscriptum’s Editions Universitaires Européennes (EUE).[/symple_box]
After the Arab Spring that Tunisia had experienced with tears and blood in 2011, the Islamists arrived to power under the leadership of Mohamed Ghannouchi who ensured a brief, poor premiership according to many observers. At that time, the seasoned statesman Béji Caid Essebsi (BCE) was called to take over from him as the interim president of the government. To fill political vacuum generated by the weakness and inadequacy of avant-garde parties, BCE founded his own party Nidaa Tounes ( Appeal of Tunisia) in the ideal of federating and uniting conflicting political sensisibilities of the country: the Left, the independents, the secular intellectuals, union activists and finally the Destorians (Constitutionalists) who empowered the new victor to revive the Prestige of the State and put an end to political unrest and economic decline inherited from the old regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali who ransacked the country’s assets before his deposition by a popular revolution and his escape to live in exile in the Gulf. Therefore the four years of the interim presidency of Moncef Marzouki in tandem with the Islamists would remain in the eyes of most Tunisians a stagnant and unpromising chapter on the socioeconomic front in the history of Tunisian republic if efforts made for the restoration of the State’s institutions were disregarded.
The second most aged president of the second Secular Republic of Tunisia after independence, BCE had already served as a State minister for more than two decades (1965-1986) during the long rule of president Habib Bourguiba who first entrusted him with a mission at the head of Council of State, on 24 April 1956, then minister of the interior during the six days war with Israel. He was expelled from the party for expressing opinions supportive of Tunisia’s liberals and rehabilitated only by his paternalist guru Bourghiba who allowed him again to resume his political career at the powerful Destour Socialist Party (DSP) in 1980 and served at last as a Foreign Minister (1981-1986) who managed to condemn through the United Nations Security Council the Israeli raid on the PLO headquarters in Tunis. As Bourgouiba was toppled by his PM Ben Ali, BCE fell in disgrace and some oblivion during the authoritarian rule of the latter.
Electoral process in late 2014 enabled BCE to win the general elections on 26 October and be at the top of the list on the first ballot on 23 November with less than 40% vote. Most Tunisians view him as their charismatic Konrad Adenauer (who brought during his chancellorship (1949-1963) political unity and economic prosperity for Germany and the core of six EU nations) with a strong sense of a smart strategist and a unifying force of Tunisia after its political polarization and economic weakness after the Arab Spring. Consecutive political assassinations of Choukri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, two political heavyweights from the secular opposition, months before elections triggered further political polarization and led to gradual disqualification of the Islamist movement Ennahda and its partial eclipse from Tunisia’s political scene especially after the increase of external threats on the country and namely potential transboundary terrorism of Al Qaeda and Daesh along its common borders with both Libya and Algeria.
It seems that Tunisia under the presidency of BCE will be quite different from that country that fell prey to politicization and political violence as it would be entrenched in the promising process of democratization, economic emancipation and increasing industrialization as the veteran is certainly veering towards a reformed, advanced brand of Bourguibism, the political system set up by the father of independence, Habib Bourguiba whom disciple BCE visited his mausoleum in Monastir on 2 November 2014, three weeks before electoral programme had begun to guarantee and muster support of the Destourians. Indeed, they do not disappoint him since he won the elections with a comfortable majority of 55, 6 % although there was a significant number of abstainers among Tunisians.
Unquestionably BCE’s long experience as a knowledgeable lawyer, statesman and diplomat would make his mission successful by introducing reforms to boost economic investments and broaden the prospects of political participation in a democracy-loving country bound up with pluralism, and improving governance especially after the disappearance of autocratic rule under potentate Ben Ali and fiasco of the Islamic experiment in the secular State and society of Tunisia to provide scientific solutions to daily difficulties the Maghreb small State is undergoing.
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Mr.Bouzekri Chakroune is a long-time writer for numerous dailies, weekly and monthly magazines since 2002. As an independent researcher, he is writing on a large variety of topics related to political, literary profiles, cultural and international issues. Mr. Bouzekri Chakroune is the author of a political-philosophical essay on Cosmopolitanism he wrote in French under the title A la recherche d’une identité cosmopolite ( In Search of A Cosmopolitan Identity) in 1991, recently published in Germany With Omniscriptum’s Editions Universitaires Européennes (EUE).[/symple_box]
