Aged Leader’s ‘Exile’ : Bourguiba: A Luxurious House Arrest

He sits quietly in his garden now, a lonely and embittered man who spends his time listening to Arabic poetry and still cannot accept what happened or understand why.

Habib Bourguiba, the “Supreme Combatant,” the founder of the modern Tunisian state and, until his forced retirement Nov. 7, its president-for-life, remains under virtual house arrest at Mornag, a hilltop palace 12 miles south of the capital of Tunis.

It is a luxurious house arrest, to be sure, with a retinue of doctors, servants and readers of English and Arabic in constant attendance. But it is a house arrest all the same, with heavy security around the perimeter of the palace to keep unauthorized visitors from getting in and, more importantly, the chief palace resident from getting out.

“It is unfortunate,” says a government official, “but what can we do? We have to watch this man. He could do anything.”

Almost a Non-Person

Bourguiba, who always thought of himself as being larger than life, is almost a non-person in Tunisia now. People rarely talk about him except in the past tense. His portrait, which used to be everywhere, remains only on the dinar, the Tunisian currency, and on the wall of a Tunis golf club whose president, Habib Bourguiba Jr., has refused to take it down.

Bourguiba is said to be 85, or 86 or maybe 87. No one really knows and no one really cares now. His birthday, Aug. 3, is no longer a national holiday.

Only his physicians and his immediate family are allowed to see him, but well-informed sources paint a picture of a disturbed and senile man who, in his more lucid moments, rails against the “treason” that he feels was perpetrated upon him and expresses incomprehension at how the pleasant little country he created and reared but ruled like an overbearing father could, in the end, so easily reject him.

50 Years of Politics

On the face of it, it is indeed surprising, for Bourguiba totally dominated Tunisian political life for more than 50 years, first as leader of the independence struggle against colonialist France and since 1956, when the struggle was won, as president.

His accomplishments were formidable, and if some Tunisians, particularly the younger ones, appear all too eager to revile him now, it is in part because they have forgotten that much of what they like most about their country is also a part of Bourguiba’s legacy.

Bourguiba was the first Arab leader to abolish polygamy (in 1956) and the first to openly advocate peace negotiations with Israel (in 1965). Although he launched a disastrous experiment with socialism in the 1960s, the effects of which the economy is still struggling to overcome today, his generally liberal policies have given Tunisia the highest per capita income ($1,200) of any North African state.

Highly Literate Population

Tunisia under Bourguiba was the Arab world’s most extraordinary anomaly, an oasis of modernity and moderation wedged between the morose socialism of Algeria and the lunacy of Libya. The people themselves are among the most literate and best educated in all of North Africa.

Bourguiba gave Tunisians much, but he demanded too much in return. He wanted not merely to rule Tunisia, but to possess it. Indeed, he once boasted that he had “created the state around myself and my personality,” adding that “there is not a single Tunisian who does not owe his being as a free citizen to me.”

He wanted not only to be loved but to be idolized. He had raised hundreds of statues of himself and nurtured a personality cult so extreme that it became in the end an impossible contradiction of the otherwise enlightened values that he tried to instill in his people.

The contradiction was apparent in many ways. For instance, Bourguiba formulated a code governing personal status that gave Tunisian women equal rights--a code that, to this day, remains the most liberal in the Arab world. But last year, when Muslim fundamentalists stepped up their challenge to his regime, Bourguiba had them ruthlessly persecuted. There were wholesale arrests, instances of torture and trials before a special State Security Court whose chief justice was also the state’s chief prosecutor.

Seeds of Failure

None of this was worse than, or even nearly as bad as, the human rights abuses that occur in most other regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa. But the seeds of Bourguiba’s failure grew from his success. Most Tunisians, with the relatively liberal and humane values that he helped to instill, were deeply shocked by his later excesses.

In his last year in office, Bourguiba “became an Oriental despot in the worst sense of the term,” said Khemais Chamari, secretary general of the Tunisian League of Human Rights, who himself was arrested four times on the Orwellian-sounding charge of having “defamed public order.”

In the end, it was Bourguiba’s growing senility that appeared to motivate those around him to contemplate his removal from office. The stories told about him during his final months at the Carthage presidential place are as shocking as they are pathetic: how he appointed a new ambassador to the United Nations and then, having forgotten about the appointment, named someone else to the post; how he approved the nominations of five new Cabinet ministers one day and denied having done so the next; how he was dissatisfied with the life sentences meted out to several fundamentalists by the State Security Court and demanded that they be re-tried and executed.

“Bourguiba’s senility reached truly pathological proportions in the end,” a senior government official said.

Palace Intrigue

Palace politics in Tunisia have always been fraught with drama and intrigue and Bourguiba, towards the end, seems to have been a bit like King Lear making a guest appearance in an episode of “Dallas.”

There are different theories as to when the plotting began in earnest, with some dating it to the month before Bourguiba’s ouster, when the president was persuaded to name his interior minister, Zine Abidine ben Ali, as prime minister and heir apparent.

Other sources insist that Ben Ali, who on Nov. 7 succeeded to the presidency, had no intention of removing Bourguiba when he became prime minister. It was only weeks later, these sources contend, that the prime minister came to the “reluctant realization” that Bourguiba was mentally unfit to continue governing the nation.

However it was, it is clear now that there were two rival groups around Bourguiba--one led by Ben Ali and Hedi Baccouche, the new prime minister, and one composed of Bourguiba confidants Mansour Skhiri and Mohammed Sayeh and Foreign Minister Hedi Mabrouk.

Other Players in Drama

Besides these two groups, there was another and by some accounts pivotal person in the form of Saida Sassi, Bourguiba’s 60-year-old niece and nursemaid.

Things came to a head at the end of October, when Bourguiba began insisting, against Ben Ali’s advice, that the fundamentalists tried and sentenced by the State Security Court be executed, informed sources said. Bourguiba, angered by his prime minister’s opposition, decided to fire him, the sources added.

By this time, however, it was clear to all those around Bourguiba that the president was no longer fit to govern. Sassi, though loyal to her uncle, shared this conviction and sided with Ben Ali in the belief that he would show more kindness towards Bourguiba than his rivals would if they came to power, the sources said.

Tipped by Sassi that he was about to be dismissed, Ben Ali consulted with police and army commanders and made his move on the night of Nov. 6. As Bourguiba slept, the presidential palace was surrounded. Several prominent doctors who at one time or another had all treated Bourguiba were summoned to sign a medical certificate affirming that he was unfit to govern in accordance with Article 57 of the Tunisian constitution, which allows the prime minister to succeed the president in the event of the latter’s incapacitation or death.

‘Constitutional Coup’

By dawn the next day, the “constitutional coup” was complete. Mabrouk, Skhiri and Sayeh were relieved of their posts. Bourguiba, who initially refused to leave his Carthage palace, was finally persuaded to move to Mornag on Nov. 9.

It all happened very smoothly. Asked why Bourguiba had no supporters to resist the change, a Western diplomat replied: “He outlived them all.”

A senior Tunisian official put it more compassionately. “We are all his supporters. We are all Bourguiba-ists,” he said. “The problem was that, in the end, Bourguiba ceased to be himself.”

Michael Ross, The Times’ bureau chief in Cairo, was recently on assignment in Tunis.