Politics of Tunisia Arab Spring. On 14 January 2011, president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali officially resigned after fleeing to Saudi Arabia, ending 23 years in power, following the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades. Street protests and civil disobedience against high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of political freedoms like freedom of speech and poor living conditions, were sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010 A Constituent Assembly was elected on 23 October 2011, and a new constitution was adopted on 26 January 2014. It was passed on 10 February
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali a military court on April 2013 for violent repression of protests in Sfax. Ben Ali was born in 1936 to moderate-income parents as the fourth of eleven children in the family. His father, Selma Hassen, worked as a guard at the port city of Sousse. He joined the local resistance against French colonial forces and was imprisoned. His expulsion from secondary school was the reason why he never completed his secondary education. He studied at the Sousse Technical Institute but failed to earn a professional certificate and joined the newly formed Tunisian Army in 1958. Nevertheless, after being chosen as