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.
Early life of Habib Bourguiba on the very night he got back home, in 1865. When he left the army, France had just taken full control over the country, with the signature of the Bardo Treaty on May 12, 1881 and the Conventions of La Marsa of June 8, 1883, which established the French protectorate with the approval of Sadok Bey. One year before its establishment, Ali Bourguiba, who was 30 years old, married Fattouma Khefacha, daughter of Ahmed Khefacha and Khadouja Mzali, which linked the Bourguiba family to the Mzali one (family of Habib Bourguiba's future prime minister Mohamed Mzali). Impoverished, the family was