ON THIS DAY ·
Ben Ali’s medical coup
7 Nov 1987 — Prime Minister Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has doctors certify that Bourguiba, aged 84, is unfit to govern. Ben Ali takes power under Article 57 of the constitution and promises pluralism. Within four years Islamists are crushed and the opposition is hollowed out.
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The moment in context
Ben Ali’s arrival offered reasons for hope. Under Article 57 of the constitution, power could pass to a successor if the president was incapacitated; seven doctors signed the certificate used in the ‘medical coup’ of 7 November 1987. Ben Ali released political prisoners. In 1988 he signed a National Pact with opposition figures, Islamist leaders and the UGTT, the General Tunisian Labour Union. The UGTT was a national trade-union federation, like a national union congress elsewhere, large enough to call a general strike.
From Tunisia under Ben Ali, chapter 8 of Protest and Change: Second-Wave Feminism and Tunisia, 1945–2015 (2008).
The place: Ben Ali’s medical coup — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — A coup that promised freedom. Many Tunisians, including Bourguiba’s opponents, welcomed Ben Ali in 1987. He had removed a senile president constitutionally and without bloodshed,…
- The turn — Redeyef, January–June 2008. For six months union activists and unemployed graduates organized the mining basin against a police state. The revolt broke twenty years of silence…
- What it changed — A template for revolt. The actions used at Gafsa appeared again two years later: sit-ins outside local government buildings, hunger strikes, marches led by unemployed…
Then ask the room: Was Ben Ali’s regime maintained more by repression or by consent? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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