President of Tunisia may in exceptional circumstances put certain draft laws to a referendum. Article 87 specifies that the president enjoys legal immunity while in office. Since the promulgation of a republican constitution in June 1959, three years after gaining independence from France, Tunisia has had just three directly elected presidents. The first president was Habib Bourguiba, who became the country's first president after the proclamation of a republic in 1957; he had been the country's de facto leader as prime minister since independence in 1956. He was formally elected to the post in 1959, and was proclaimed president for life in 1975.
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