The acting former president of the Tunisian Republic, Fouad Mebazaa, died on Tuesday April 23, 2025 at the age of 91. Hospitalized for several days in a private clinic in Tunis, he died discreetly, far from political bustle. His funeral took place in the afternoon of Wednesday, April 24, in strict family intimacy.
Despite the central role he played during the democratic transition in 2011, no official presence was noticed during the funeral. The Presidency of the Republic did not publish any statement of condolences, or publicly expressed its tribute to the one who had assumed the presidential interim after the fall of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.
Fouad Mebazaa, former neo-Destour activist, had occupied several ministerial portfolios under Bourguiba, then under Ben Ali. He had been president of the Chamber of Deputies from 1997 to 2011. On January 15, 2011, following the Tunisian Revolution, he was appointed acting president, a position he held until the election of Moncef Marzouki in December 2011.
If social networks and certain former political leaders have briefly welcomed its memory, the silence of state institutions has aroused questions and criticisms in certain circles.
For a figure that has marked a delicate turning point in contemporary history of the country, discretion – even forgetting – of its funeral sounds like a symbol.
