Habib Bourguiba personality and that it had to be preserved until the country got emancipated. This statement surprised liberals like the French unionist Joachim Durel. The controversy that followed opposed him to Bourguiba for nearly a month, Bourguiba writing in "L'Étendard tunisien" while Durel responded in "Tunis socialiste". The year 1930 was the peak of French colonization in North Africa, which led France to celebrate the centenary of the French conquest of Algeria, by organizing a eucharistic congress in Tunisia. On this occasion, millions of Europeans invaded the capital city and went to the Saint-Lucien de Carthage cathedral, disguised as crusaders, which
Habib Bourguiba ; Ahmed Mestiri, who represented the liberal faction among his party ; Mahmoud El Materi, the first president of Neo-Destour, who was discredited many times and, losing confidence in Bourguiba, decided to retire. Yet Bourguiba himself made the diagnosis of the dangers of political archaism that threatened the country. On 8 June 1970, after noting that "experience "[reveals]" that the concentration of power in the hands of an only one person, as devoted as he is, has risks", he described the great lines of the institutional reform he considered, back then. It will focus, he announced, on "amendments "[that]" will