Beji Caid Essebsi, world’s oldest president in service, dies at 92

Official notice issued by the President’s Office announcing his death

Tunis: Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi died on Thursday, the day Tunisia marks Republic Day.

Essebsi has been Tunisia’s leader since December 2014 when he became the first freely and directly elected president.

A lawyer by profession, he served as interior minister, defense minister, ambassador, foreign affairs minister and Speaker of parliament. He was Prime Minister from February 2011 to December 2011.

He founded the Nidaa Tounes (Tunisia Call) political party that won the parliamentary elections in 2014.

Essabsi, born on November 29, 1926, was admitted last week to a hospital in the capital Tunis and was last seen on television on Monday as he received a minister. His office said that he was re-admitted late on Wednesday.

Older world figures holding top offices, but not as presidents, are Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad, born in July 1925, twice Prime Minister (1981–2003 and 2018–present) and Queen Elisabeth II, born in April 1926, and queen since 1952.

Essebsi married his wife on February 8, 1958. The couple have two daughters, Amel and Salwa, and two sons, Mohamed Hafedh and Khélil.

In November, Essebsi used his birthday anniversary to interact with Tunisians in an unprecedented talk program on a private radio station.

“My major aim is to serve Tunisia to the best of his capabilities in whatever time left in my life,” he said.

The more than four-minute phone talk was posted on the presidency’s official site.

Tunisians hailed him on his birthday and used the occasion to engage via social media in light-hearted jokes with him.

“Happy birthday, Bajbouj!” Oussema Soula posted, using the president’s nickname favored by Tunisians.

“You are older than Tunisia’s independence by 30 years and you lived in this world at the same time as Eisenhower, Churchill, Nixon, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Charles de Gaulle, Stalin, Gorbachev, Mother Teresa, Malcolm X, Mandela, Ghandi. You were here when major historic events such as Pearl Harbor, the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, the birth of NATO and the Vietnam war, occurred.”

In another post, he said that Essebsi “pre-dated” the 21 tournaments of the Football World Cup. The first final was held in Uruguay in 1930 and the last in Russia in 2018.

Fares, another blogger, mused that with 92 candles on the birthday cake, Essebsi would need the fire department to help put them out.

The comments showed that despite the increasingly challenging economic situations and the merciless wars of narratives between the various political ideologies and social tendencies, Tunisians remain open to the joyous way of life that has characterized the Mediterranean country.