Human rights in Tunisia who accept that, for as long as the majority opposes them, compromise is inevitable.” After the revolution, moreover, Tunisia became the first nation in the Arab world “to legally enshrine gender parity in the electoral rolls.” According to Freedom House, the October 2011 elections “represented a dramatic improvement in electoral freedoms and practices. Under the former regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the cabinet, much of the legislature, and many regional officials had been appointed directly by the president. Elections were tightly controlled, and term limits were extended to allow Ben Ali to remain in power. By contrast, in the
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State but she avoided specific issues of U.S. aid and when elections should take place. President Obama was reportedly unhappy with U.S. intelligence agencies following their failure to foresee the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as well as the Egyptian protests. Responding to criticism that the State Department had failed to see the developments in Egypt coming, Clinton defended the U.S. in an interview on Al-Arabiya, saying "I don't think anybody could have predicted we'd be sitting here talking about the end of the Mubarak presidency at the time that this all started." Reflecting