Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Whose Ouster Sparked the Arab Spring, Dies
Ousted Tunisian President Ben Ali Has Died, Tunisia Radio Says
(Bloomberg) -- Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the longtime Tunisian leader whose ouster in 2011 helped set off a wave of uprisings across the Arab world, has died. He was 83.
Ben Ali’s death after an illness while in self-imposed exile in Saudi Arabia was confirmed in a phone interview by his son-in-law, Slim Chiboub. His body will be transferred from the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah to Mecca for burial, his lawyer Mounir Ben Salha said.
Ben Ali came to power in a coup that removed President Habib Bourguiba. He served as the North African nation’s president from 1987 to January 2011, when a fruit vendor set himself on fire to protest the seizure of his cart and triggered the Arab Spring.
Revolutions swept through Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, plunging the countries into political upheaval and creating the conditions for three wars that are yet to end. In Egypt, the unrest toppled President Hosni Mubarak and opened the door for an Islamist successor who served only one year before a military-backed popular uprising saw him also booted from office.
Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. A Tunisian court in 2012 sentenced him in absentia to life in prison for inciting violence that led to deaths. A military court later handed out another life term for violently quashing protests.
New Elections
He died just days after Tunisia staged a vibrant presidential election, in the latest sign of the democratic progress it alone among the nations that saw uprisings has achieved. Successive Tunisian governments have failed, though, to deliver the economic growth needed to dent stubbornly high unemployment.
A low-profile law professor and a controversial TV personality took the top two slots in the vote in a resounding rejection of the status quo, and will compete in a second round ballot.
Along with political infighting, a series of militant attacks as well as frequent strikes organized by the country’s powerful labor unions hobbled the economy.
Vibrant Economy
Before rising to the presidency, Ben Ali served as an ambassador, then intelligence chief and defense minister among other posts, before being named prime minister by Bourguiba in October 1987. A month later, armed with a medical report declaring the then-president unfit, Ben Ali took over.
Building autocratic rule after a brief period of greater freedoms, Ben Ali’s key accomplishment was boosting the economy and attracting foreign investments to a nation famous for drawing European tourists.
But as elsewhere in the Arab world, macroeconomic success failed to trickle down. Hardest hit were rural areas, and Ben Ali was unable to significantly address unemployment.
The issue came to a head with the Dec. 17, 2010 self-immolation by Mohamed Bouazizi in the town of Sidi Bouzid. His act of defiance lit the match that ignited the Tunisia uprising and led to Ben Ali’s eventual resignation around a month later.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jihen Laghmari in Cairo at jlaghmari@bloomberg.net;Tarek El-Tablawy in cairo at teltablawy@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Paul Abelsky
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