Tunisia's Unique President

...Bourguiba has triumphed, but he is a big man at the head of a small country, of whose 3.5 million inhabitants half a million are officially listed as unemployed...

...Bourguiba's unique position is the natural result of a decades-long battle, in which, as agitator, fighter, diplomat and statesman, amid the suffering of imprisonment and the temptations of various offers by his enemies, he held fast to his own line and remained true to the cause of Tunisian nationalism...

...What kind of man is Bourguiba...

...He was given his answer by the sea of humanity which greeted the nationalist leader upon his return to Tunis on June 1, 1955...

...To achieve this goal, we must deny ourselves a great deal, stick together and work constructively...

...But Tunisia is an underdeveloped Oriental country...

...And he is fond of recalling that he called upon the Tunisian fellaghas (anti-French guerrillas) to give up their arms while Tunisia was not yet independent and he was still interned by the French...

...The stages by which Tunisia at last moved toward freedom meant for Bourguiba progressively milder prisons: first, the island of La Groix near Lorient, finally the castle of La Ferte in Burgundy, from which French Premier Edgar Faure had him released to finish the work which Pierre Mendes-France had begun: the abolition of the Tunisian protectorate...

...Bourguiba is a great popular leader and international statesman, but economic and social policy is not among his major interests...

...The Tunisians, who like to think of their country as a meeting ground of various cultures and a conciliator among the nations, know how closely the prestige of their young state is bound up with Bourguiba's unique role...

...One of these ministers, who like most of the others was 20 years younger than Bourguiba, told me later that after four days he had been unable to maintain the pace of the Presidential journey...

...As a reformer, he is the leader who, without a religious war but rapidly, smoothly and steadily, is transforming his country into a Western democratic state and in less than two years has already achieved decisive results in this direction...

...His life reminds one of the great democratic nationalists of the 19th century or of the fighters for Indian freedom, except that in Tunis a modern labor movement has played a special role...

...Not all Western seeds can sprout here...

...Among the ministers who escorted the President, Bechir Ben Yamid was absent...

...He had had tuberculosis in his youth...

...Our new state is, after all, still weak, and we must support it...

...All the ministers whom I visited in Tunis gave me a set of four pamphlets containing speeches by Bourguiba and a large illustrated album in which I counted 25 pictures of the President...

...Although I did not accompany Bourguiba on his tour—I preferred the palm-studded beach of the island of Djerba to the dusty towns, with temperatures of 120° in the shade, through which he was traveling—I did not lose the feeling of his presence, for his voice sounded over every radio...

...When he now found himself plagued by bronchitis and pneumonia, he feared for his life for the first time and sent instructions to his associates which could be taken as a political testament...

...Everything else is a luxury...

...Half the population is under 20 years of age, and, without economic and social progress, even Bourguiba's prestige will not hold this youth in check for long...

...To the surprise of many people, Ben Sallah accepted the post of Minister of Health...

...Habib Bourguiba is a fighter—and conciliator Tunisia's Unique President By Frangois Bondy Editor, "Preuves" There were about a hundred of us that Sunday at 6 a.m., at the Tunis city airport of El Aouina, to wave goodbye to the President of the young Tunisian Republic, Habib Bourguiba, who was leaving on a special Swissair plane for a vacation on the Vierwaldstadter See in Switzerland...

...And it is no exaggeration to say that Bourguiba conducted the nationalist struggle in a wise and moderate fashion which transformed him into a statesman of international rank...

...However, when he was imprisoned in the fortress at Marseilles during the war in the worst possible conditions, he refused to appeal to the German military authorities to intervene...

...I was not surprised, for the rumor of his dismissal had started circulating the day before...

...The next day, Bourguiba started one of his great tours through the country, accompanied by most of his ministers and a whole retinue of newspapermen...

...Bourguiba is perhaps the only leader of a genuine, broad popular movement outside the European-American world, and above all the only leader of such a movement in the Moslem world, who consistently stresses the advantages and benefits of democratic Western civilization...

...The next morning before dawn, however, he had suddenly returned to Tunis, where he worked straight through the day and held a big reception in the evening...

...Bourguiba believes less in ideology than in human contacts, and the human warmth which he radiates, the charm which few can resist, have often helped him more than plans and systems...

...In 1952, Resident General Hautecloque had said: "The Tunisians are a forgetful people...

...I had hardly been on Tunisian soil five minutes when the car in which I was riding was halted by motorcyclists so that the President could drive by on the way to his residence in Carthage...

...Bourguiba may well strike the French as an uncomfortable friend who constantly criticizes them, who has won much from them and continues to ask much...

...When Ben Youssef returned from Cairo in 1955 to carry on a battle against the French-Tunisian conventions, Bourguiba personally met him at the airport and brought him to his villa...

...For on the latter depends in great measure the future of French-Tunisian relations...

...The question suggests itself whether a little more opposition and frank criticism might not be good for Bourguiba and for the country as a whole...

...On Friday, when I visited him at his ministry, it had struck me that, for all his esteem for Bourguiba, he had spoken critically of the overly personal regime in Tunisia and particularly the lack of a broad economic concept...

...I received an answer to this question from one of the most ardent Tunisian revolutionaries, the union leader Ben Sallah, successor of Far-hat Hached, who had been considered a potential leader of the Opposition...

...Not only in Tunis, but in every other town I \ isited, the largest street was called Avenue Bourguiba...

...In a cabin on the huge rock which dominates the island, this gregarious, loquacious man lived from May 1952 to March 1954 completely alone, without electric light, without wood to heat his lodging during the grim winter...

...Since Gandhi...

...His most difficult time was during his last exile, on the very same island of La Galite where he rested while I was in Tunisia...

...Thereupon, Bourguiba launched a series of speeches to justify his policy, and the next party congress supported him to the limit...

...Underneath his geniality, however, there is a great deal of toughness and even real hardness...

...It was on the following day that, relaxed and cheerful, he appeared at the airport...

...Ben Youssef, repudiated and removed from his posts, left the country and is now basing his hopes on intrigue and a possible putsch...

...Bourguiba's wife, a Frenchwoman who is highly regarded in both Tunisian and French circles in Tunis, remained with him until the take-off, then returned to her residence on Belvedere Hill...

...When he found, however, that his charm and conciliatory approach did not help, he told his friends, who feared a struggle for power between Bourguiba and Ben Youssef which would produce a grave crisis for Tunisia: "In three weeks, I'll be rid of him...

...The picture which appears most frequently next to Bourguiba's is that of the union leader Farhat Hached, who was murdered by French extremists several years ago...

...Insofar as Bourguiba's prestige strengthens this state within and without—for all the danger that so much power in one man's hands inevitably entails—it is at present an essential for Tunisian progress and also for a solution of the great North African question of Algeria...

...Nevertheless, although signs of a "cult of personality" cannot be denied, it would be wrong to draw drastic conclusions...

...It is a temporary omnipotence in a state which is weak not only in relation to the rest of the world but also in an internal administrative sense...

...Bourguiba had gone on and on with the tour, delivered speech after speech, shown himself to thousands of Tunisians, spoken to hundreds, and finally taken a mo-torboat to the little island of La Galite to take a rest...

...Properly speaking, Bourguiba's role is a dual one: that of reformer and conciliator...

...When Bourguiba now places his moral authority and political experience at the disposal of the French and the Algerian nationalists, and warns both sides against taking extreme positions from which they cannot retreat, he is doing so as a fighter who has shown that compromise does not necessarily mean capitulation but is often the prelude to victory...

...Although since my visit Ben Sallah and Bourguiba have clashed, this statement helps us correct the picture of Bourguiba's omnipotence...

...When I asked him whether he felt himself reduced in stature by this new role, he replied: "We front-line fighters of the Neo-Destour have all grown up amid Western ideas and aspirations...

...The decision of the Tunisian unions against the Communist WFTU and for the anti-Communist ICFTU has helped form the basis for contemporary Tunisian national policy...

...When the President himself arranges to have his statue erected in Tunis, that goes far beyond the other spontaneous popular tributes, and it is a curiously Oriental trait in this thoroughly Westernized statesman that he should also have his mausoleum built in his native city of Monastir...

...To be sure, "Ben Youssefism" still has some appeal among the Tunisian aristocracy, and the danger might reappear in the event of an economic or political crisis...

...As long as possible, he sought to effect a reconciliation with his old colleague Sallah Ben Youssef, who was once General Secretary of the Neo-Destour party...

...Even the labor unions cannot play the same role here as in the West...

...When the Italians finally brought him to Rome and treated him as an honored guest, he made none of the political concessions they had hoped for, and, at a time when so many Frenchmen despaired of victory, he wrote from a French jail to his political friends in Tunis that the victory of the democracies was inevitable and they should give France their unconditional support, without bringing up the question of independence for the time being...

...As a conciliator, he is the man who conducted the long struggle against the French protectorate without blind xenophobia or anti-Western rancor and without accepting any of the Fascist or Communist offers that were made to him...

...Of all the worries which weigh upon the mind of President Bourguiba, the Algerian conflict is incomparably the greatest...

...they scarcely remember the name Bourguiba any more...

...It is true that, in good things and bad alike (right now, the good predominates by far), Bourguiba's personality is virtually identical with the Tunisian state...

...If the democrat Bourguiba today enjoys a power in his country which many dictators might envy, his present power is far less responsible for his prestige than are the years when he was apparently helpless, when he was dragged from prison to prison in North Africa and France, lived under French Resident Generals both lenient and harsh, and alternated between negotiation and exile...

...During my stay in the country, I was constantly aware of his omnipresence...

...Tunisia's real problem is to avoid the vicious circle of coups d'etat and adventures in which the other Arab countries are caught...