Tunisia President Flexes Political Muscle : Bourguiba Shakes Up Government in Effort to Revitalize Country

Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s president for life, is showing at age 83 that there is a lot of life left in him. He has just divorced his wife, fired his prime minister and chosen a new political heir.

Aides say that in the past few months Bourguiba has become more active, that he has taken on a heavier work load than at any time in the past decade. Despite his slurred speech, an unsteady gait and an occasional lapse of memory, he has resumed working four to six hours a day, receiving ministers, hearing reports and passing judgments.

“He is trying, at the age of 83, to take back the reins of power and run the country again,” a Western diplomat said.

A senior Tunisian official concurred, saying, “He feels his country needs him now,”

The feeling is not unjustified. Tiny Tunisia, which for 30 years has enjoyed a spell of prosperity and stability unequaled by any of its North African neighbors, has fallen on hard times. Its economy is bending under the burden of falling oil prices, declining tourist revenues and expatriate worker remittances, and a poor harvest that will probably raise an already substantial food import bill by as much as $60 million this year.

Trade Deficit, Foreign Debt

For a country about two-fifths the size of California, with 7 million people, the figures look bleak indeed: a trade deficit this year that may nudge the $1-billion mark, a balance of payments deficit of $300 million, and a foreign debt of $5 billion with virtually no hard currency reserves.

Too proud, until now, to resort to debt rescheduling, “the Tunisians have run their foreign exchange reserves down to zero,” a Western diplomat said. “They’re broke.”

High unemployment--25% by Western estimates--and economic austerity have added fuel to the fires of Muslim fundamentalism smoldering in Tunisia, as elsewhere in the Arab world.

And then there are the combustible passions of the young. Fully 60% of Tunisia’s population is under 25, and militant fundamentalism is said by diplomats and other observers to be spreading on the university campuses and in the armed forces.

But to many analysts, Tunisian as well as foreign, the biggest problem now is Bourguiba himself. Officially 83 but believed to be at least two years older, the president has had two heart attacks, including one two years ago that nearly killed him, and he suffers from severe arteriosclerosis, commonly called hardening of the arteries.

Carried into Hall

At a convention of his ruling Destourian Socialist Party in June, Bourguiba had to be carried into the hall. He delivered a short statement, prompted by aides who stood behind him.

In July, Bourguiba shocked Tunisians by abruptly firing Mohamed Mzali, his prime minister and designated successor. Mzali’s downfall was not entirely unexpected; in six years on the job he had developed a reputation for ruthlessness that made him widely unpopular. But according to diplomats here, it came as a jolt because of the uncertainty it introduced into the succession scenario.

Mzali was blamed for Tunisia’s economic failures, for widespread government corruption and for a decision he took some years ago, as minister of education, to drop French-language instruction in primary schools as part of a policy of “Arabization.” This decision came back to haunt him this year when 87% of the students studying French at the secondary school level failed their exams.

Despite having led the struggle against France for Tunisian independence, Bourguiba is considered very pro-French. One of his first directives after dismissing Mzali was to reinstitute French alongside Arabic in the primary schools.

But it may have been Mzali’s eagerness to consolidate his position as Bourguiba’s successor that was his undoing, some analysts say. In Tunisia, politics has always been an incestuous business, and Mzali seems to have run afoul of some members of the coterie surrounding Bourguiba as he began to bring friends and relatives into the government.

Suspicious Car Accident

Most of those friends and relatives have been dismissed or jailed. One is said to have been killed in a suspicious car accident, late at night on a lonely desert road.

Mzali’s most powerful opponent appears to have been Saida Sassi, the president’s 60-year-old niece and nursemaid. Next to Bourguiba himself, one political analyst said, she is the most powerful person in Tunisia today.

“She has both the president’s ear and the keys to his medicine cabinet,” he said. “She fills his prescriptions and gives him his pills. He is totally dependent on her.”

Sassi is widely believed to have been not only responsible in part for Mzali’s downfall but for Bourguiba’s recent decision to divorce his wife, Wassila, who went to live in Washington earlier this year after quarreling with Sassi.

At the moment, Sassi and three associates--known as the “Gang of Four” after the clique that wielded great influence in China in Mao Tse-tung’s declining years--seem to control events at the presidential palace in Carthage, where the political intrigue has been likened by diplomats to a North African version of the television series “Dallas.”

Besides Sassi, the clique includes Cabinet Director Mansour Skhiri, Interior Minister Zine Abidine ben Ali and Education Minister Amour Chedli, who is also Bourguiba’s personal physician.

Successor Chose

Although Bourguiba chose Finance Minister Rashid Sfar, the son of an old comrade in arms, to succeed Mzali as prime minister and designated heir, most analysts say that Ben Ali seems the likeliest to emerge on top.

The constitution stipulates that in the event of the president’s death, the prime minister is to succeed to the presidency until an election is carried out. Sfar is characterized by several diplomats as an honest, “plodding technocrat” with no political experience or power base who, if he inherits the presidency, is not likely to be able to keep it if challenged.

Another possibility is the president’s son, Habib Jr., who though he has shown neither the inclination nor the aptitude to succeed his father, is still considered by some to be a likely successor, if only because Bourguiba is believed to want to perpetuate his name.

This scenario, however, is likely to be resisted by Sassi. She and “Bibi Jr.,” as the son is known, are said to detest each other.

In the meantime, Bourguiba is keeping everybody guessing.

“He may be subject to manipulation, but he is not senile,” a Western diplomat said. “He is still unpredictable, and he still has the last word.”

A senior Tunisian official added, “His current plan is to continue running the country until 1990, and then maybe think about retiring.”