Liberalism in Tunisia the country. The demonstrations were caused by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of political freedoms like freedom of speech and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were the result of action by police and security forces against demonstrators. The protests were sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010 and led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali 28 days later on 14 January 2011, when he
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali candidates were required to get endorsements from 30 political figures. Given the RCD's near-absolute dominance of the political scene, prospective opposition candidates discovered they couldn't get their nomination papers signed. The subsequent years saw the return of several Bourguiba-era restrictions. For many years, the press had been expected to practice self-censorship, but this increasingly gave way to official censorship. Amendments to the press code allowed the Interior Ministry to review all newspaper and magazine articles before publication. In 1992, the president's older brother Habib Ben Ali was tried in absentia in France for laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking, in