Five years ago in Tunisia a nationwide rebellion erupted against the government of Zine Abideen Ben Ali. Youth, students, workers and small businesspeople rose up demanding an end to the system of dictatorship and subservience to France and the United States.
By mid-January of 2011, Ben Ali’s regime had fallen forcing him to flee to Saudi Arabia. An interim government took over promising to hold elections and draft a new constitution for the North African state.
A longtime opposition political figure Moncef Marzouki, the founder of the Congress of the Republic, was elected by the Constituent Assembly to be president in December 2011. Marzouki appointed Hamadi Jebali of the moderate Islamist Ennahda Movement, dominated by Rashid al-Ghannushi, which established a government by the end of the same month.