{"id":3330,"date":"2019-07-25T13:18:24","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T13:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2019-10-26T18:28:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T18:28:50","slug":"beji-caid-essebsi-tunisias-first-freely-elected-president-dies-aged-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2019\/07\/25\/beji-caid-essebsi-tunisias-first-freely-elected-president-dies-aged-92\/","title":{"rendered":"Beji Caid Essebsi: Tunisia&#8217;s first freely elected president dies aged 92"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Tunisia&#8217;s first freely elected President, Beji Caid Essebsi, has died aged 92, the country&#8217;s presidency says.<\/p>\n<p>He was the world&#8217;s oldest sitting president. He was admitted to hospital on Wednesday but officials did not say why he was receiving treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Essebsi won Tunisia&#8217;s first free elections in 2014 following Arab uprisings across the region.<\/p>\n<p>He was admitted to hospital last month after suffering what officials said was a severe health crisis.<\/p>\n<p>They gave no further details at the time. But Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, who visited him in hospital, urged people to stop spreading &#8220;fake news&#8221; about his condition.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-14107241\">Read more about Tunisia here<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to the country&#8217;s constitution, Mr Chahed can take over as president for no more than 60 days or until a replacement is elected.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, <a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-africa-47842720\">Mr Essebsi announced that he would not stand in elections expected in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He told a meeting of his ruling Nidaa Tounes party that someone younger should take charge. He said it was time to &#8220;open the door to the youth&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Essebsi was a former lawyer who studied and trained in the French capital Paris. During his long political career he also served as interior minister and Speaker of parliament.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"media-caption__text\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3331\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/tuniasia23.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/tuniasia23.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/tuniasia23-150x84.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/pub\/tuniasia23-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Former Tunisian President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali was ousted in 2011 after 23 years in office.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, Tunisia has won praise as the only democracy to emerge from the revolutions of the so-called Arab spring.<\/p>\n<p>But in recent years the country has suffered attacks by Islamists and economic problems, with unemployment a persistent issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tunisia&#8217;s first freely elected President, Beji Caid Essebsi, has died aged 92, the country&#8217;s presidency says. He was the world&#8217;s oldest sitting president. He was admitted to hospital on Wednesday but officials did not say why he was receiving treatment. Mr Essebsi won Tunisia&#8217;s first free elections in 2014 following Arab uprisings across the region. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1,54,12],"tags":[5569,11394,11583,8440,11606,5241,10205,4066,7298,11949,6351,111,12634,6825,4502,10776,9833,67,1253,1198,7574,3805,3174,9277,5635,9176,8206,6433,7746,36,594,5784],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","category-obituary","category-world-news","tag-arab","tag-attacks","tag-capital","tag-crisis","tag-democracy","tag-died","tag-dies","tag-el","tag-fake","tag-fake-news","tag-french","tag-ghananews","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-islamists","tag-lawyer","tag-meeting","tag-nsemgh","tag-paris","tag-parliament","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-prime-minister","tag-speaker","tag-speaker-of-parliament","tag-spring","tag-treatment","tag-tunisia","tag-unemployment","tag-world","tag-who","tag-youth"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}