from a correspondent

Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president, died on 6 April, aged 96. Since the "medical coup" which removed him from office in 1987, President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has sought to revise Tunisia's history. Statues of the country's founding father have been taken down, holidays linked to his life -National Day was his birthday - either changed or scrapped.

His successor has tried to install his own personality cult. A new holiday was added: the anniversary of the "Blessed Change", 7 November, 1987, the day Bourguiba was deposed.

Bourguiba's funeral on 8 April in his home town, Monastir, proved how futile Ben Ali's efforts have been. As tens of thousands of mourners chanted at the funeral 13 years after his fall from power, Bourguiba's spirit lives on. When Ben Ali strode into the arena behind the gun carriage carrying the coffin, the crowd raised its fists and cried: "With our souls and blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you Bourguiba".

Earlier, hundreds of students, all too young to remember Bourguiba, held a rare demonstration in Monastir for Bourguiba and against Ben Ali. Seldom has such a vivid illustration of the gap between the president and his people been shown to an international assembly of heads of state and journalists.

The day after Bourguiba died, a tabloid newspaper splashed its front page with a female model's tongue drooling over a strawberry. Television continued to run trite programs on furry animals, leaving profiles of the independence leader to Algerian TV. The state did declare a week of mourning, but on the day of the funeral school continued as normal and shops stayed open. State radio was careful not to disclose the directions for the funeral until it was too late for most of the population to get to Monastir.

Never mind, thought most, at least they could watch it on television.

They were wrong. For the authorities, the funerals of Princess Diana and Hassan II (Morocco) merited live coverage, but not that of Tunisia's own "Supreme Combattant", founding father and ruler for 30 years. Nor was it on satellite TV. Mysteriously, Tunisian TV feeds to international news organizations rematerialized only after the funeral had slipped from the headlines.

Insult was added to injury. At the last minute the route for the funeral was shortened "on security grounds" (everything on security grounds) to the route round the back of the cemetery, which tradition reserves for suicides.

The streets are buzzing with indignation. From Bourguiba's family - many of whom live in exile - to housewives. Tunisians are now voicing criticisms they have suppressed since the Blessed Change. Some openly question the legitimacy of a man who they say came to power in a putsch.
Ben Ali can still make a strong case. When he removed Bourguiba, the erratic mood swings of the Supreme Combattant had driven Tunisia to the brink. The rich were exporting their wealth. Today the country has the fourth highest per capita income in Africa, $2,600 a year.

But there are signs that Tunisians are growing sick of Ben Ali's rule. Since October's derisory presidential elections, in which he claimed 99.45% of the vote, workers and students have gone on strike, riots have broken out in the south and Tunisia's Western backers, including the US, the first state to recognize Ben Ali's takeover, are growing more vocal in their criticisms of human rights abuses.

Tunisian human rights activists are growing more confident, holding open meetings to denounce "the dictator" and his near paranoid sycophantic press. When MEI (Middle East International) went to press, journalist Tewfiq Ben Brik was in his third week of a hunger strike in protest at two years of harassment over his reports for two Swiss newspapers and his trial in a closed court for defamation.

On April 11, the security forces evicted him from his refuge in a publishing house in central Tunis and closed the premises. Sihem Ben Didrine, the mild-mannered publisher, found that her dog had been poisoned and that doctored pornographic photographs of her had been posted (mailed) to her teenage sons. On 17 April, a number of activists started hunger strikes in solidarity with Ben Brik.

Although it may dent President Ben Ali's legitimacy, popular anger is unlikely to lead to his demise. But the circle of criticism is widening. May's municipal elections look set to be fixed. The winds of reform elsewhere in the Magreb have yet to blow Tunisia's way. But the climate change is unmistakable.

Staying Away...

In contrast to the 40 heads of state Hassan II (Morocco's deceased long-time king) burial attracted to Rabat, Bourguiba's attracted just four. This was partly because few world leaders see any advantage in sharing a podium with Ben Ali, Jacques Chirac being a notable exception, and partly in deference to his sensitivities about his predecessor's stature. But it was also a reminder of the foes as well as the friends Bourguiba made in his 30 years in power.

President Arafat, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Bouteflika were there, a tribute to what Bourguiba did for the Palestinians, Yemenis and Algerians. He provided refuge in Tunis for the PLO when it was driven from Beirut, offered Algerian guerrillas a haven when France still had a naval base in Bizerte, and backed Sana'a against Aden before unification.

The United States sent the trade secretary and architect of a US plan for economic integration in the Maghreb. But the Maghreb turn-out might have given him a mwasure of the prospects for its success. Morocco's Mohammed VI sent his brother Rachid, in his place on the grounds that according to the Makhzen tradition, kings do not go to funerals in their first year on the throne. But why did the prime minister, Abderrahman Youssoufi, also send his deputy? President Ould Taya of Mauritania - still in the Maghreb dog house over its deal with Israel - was absent, as was Muammar Qadhafi, rarely one to miss a photo opportunity on the world stage. Perhaps he is still smarting from Bourguiba's rupture of the Tunisian-Libya Union in 1974?

Egypt's attendance was low profile too. And there was no Israeli delegation, which seemed ungrateful given that Bourguiba was the first Arab leader to publicly advocate Arab recognition of Israel more than a decade before Sadat. Other surprises, Turkey - the model for Bourguiba's secular state - and Italy sent only low level representatives. Britain, which still harbors the Tunisian Islamic leader Rached Ghannouchi, sent a junior minister.

Habib Bourguiba's Mixed Legacy

Habib Bourguiba, who died on 6 April at the age of 96, will be remembered as the true father of modern Tunisia, despite the unceremonious manner in which he was removed from office in November, 1987. By then, the endless intrigues that marred the latter part of his 30 years as head of state and his growing megalomania had increased to a point where senior members of the establishment felt that the stability of the country was at risk. His exit was unworthy of a statesman of such stature. His successor, General Ben Ali, confined Bourguiba to house arrest in all but name in his home town of Monastir. Many Tunisians feel that the "Moudjahid al Akbar" was treated in an unnecessarily mean fashion.

Bourguiba became president in 1957, a year after Tunisia won independence from France and after he had removed the Bey Larmine, last scion of the dynasty which had ruled the country for two centuries.

He was the driving force behind efforts to modernize a country with few natural resources, little fertile land and meager water resources. Among his most widely acknowledged achivements was the emancipation of women to a greater degree than in any other Arab country. The 1956 Personal Status Code, followed in the early 1960s by a vast family planning program, gave Tunisian women rights which, at the time, neither their Italian or Spanish counterparts enjoyed. Contraception was available to Tunisian women before it was legal in France. This policy initiated a cycle of emancipation, education and public presence, most notably in the work place, which helps explain why the country has progressed so much faster economically than most of its peers in the Middle East and Africa. Population growth fell from 3.2% a generation ago to 1.9%. Standards of education and health care have been much improved, with illiteracy falling from 88% to less than a third today.

Bourguiba failed, however, to etch out modern political institutions in Tunisia or uphold freedom of speech and human rights. In the early years, his refusal to countenance pluralism led him to dismiss able ministers he feared might threaten his absolute rule. As Bourguiba grew older and his health declined, the rise of mediocrity was all too visible. For many years, his second wife, Wassila Ben Ammar, played a key role, pushing able young men to the fore. By the 1980s however, the Palace of Carthage became a nest of vipers. Bourguiba divorced Wassila and one of his nieces, who fawning ministers addressed as "Auntie" came to rule the president's agenda.

Nor did Bourguiba hesitate to use violence, notably when he had his former comrade, Arab nationalist Saleh Ben Yosef, assassinated in Frankfurt in 1961. But he used it sparingly. Tunisia was not then a country where people feared the midnight knock at the door. But as radical Islamic fundamentalist forces gathered strength in the 1980s - Bourguiba's attempts to "modernize" the Islamic message by, for example, discouraging fasting during Ramadan, never won public acceptance. This lack of freedom deprived the regime, and many Tunisians who would have been prepared to defend its considerable achievements, of the ideas and means to counter the new opposition. His failure to establish the basic rules of democracy cost the country dearly. Tunisia has turned into an Orwellian world.

Bourguiba told the Palestinians in a speech at a refugee camp in Jericho in 1965 that they should accept the existence of Israel and that the longer they waited before negotiating with it, the less they would get. History may have proven him right, though he was vilified through the Arab world at the time.

In 1982, the PLO set up its offices in Tunis after being driven from Beirut. When Israel bombed the PLO headquarterse at Hamman Chatt in 1986, Ronald Reagan at first refused to condemn the act. This gave rise to the only recorded instance of Bourguiba giving vent to fury against the US - the ambassador to Tunis was given a dressing down of such violence that he was left speechless. The US reversed its position.

In many ways, the Tunisian scene was too narrow for this master actor. He would have loved to stride a larger stage. Despite the shameful funeral he was accorded, his personality will continue to dominate the history of modern Tunisia.

Francis Ghiles