Moncef Marzouki

Moncef Marzouki (2012)

Moncef Marzouki and Riadh Sidaoui in 1990 in Tunis

Moncef Marzouki ( Arabic المنصف المرزوقي, al-Munṣif al-Marzūqī ), with full name Moncef ben Mohamed Bedoui-Marzouki (born July 7, 1945 in Grombalia , Nabeul Governorate ) is a Tunisian politician , human rights activist and doctor . Marzouki was the interim President of Tunisia from December 12, 2011 to December 31, 2014 . He had been elected by the Constituent Assembly and held the office until a successor was elected, who was directly elected under the new 2014 constitution. In the presidential election on November 23, 2014 , Marzouki ran for a regular term and moved into the runoff election on December 21, 2014 with a good 33 percent of the vote, but was defeated by his challenger Beji Caid Essebsi with 44.32 to 55.68 percent of votes. Essebsi replaced Marzouki in office on December 31, 2014.

In 1973 Marzouki completed his medical studies at the University of Strasbourg , where he then worked as an assistant doctor. In 1979 he returned to his home country and from 1980 became involved in the Ligue tunisienne des droits de l'homme (LTDH), the Tunisian human rights league , of which he was president from 1989 to 1994. From 1981 to 2000 Marzouki worked as a medical professor at the University of Sousse .

In 1994, Marzouki spent four months in prison after attempting to run the presidential election against the autocratic ruling zine El Abidine Ben Ali . After fleeing to France in 2001, Marzouki founded the left-wing opposition party Congress for the Republic (CPR), which was banned until 2011 .

On January 17, 2011, he announced that he wanted to run for the office of Tunisian President in the early elections announced for March, which had become necessary after President Ben Ali's flight in the wake of the revolution in Tunisia in 2010/2011 , but then were deferred in favor of the drafting of a constitution by a constituent assembly .

After the election to the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia in 2011, Ennahda , the strongest party after the election with 89 seats, and the Congress Party agreed on Marzouki as interim president on November 15. On December 12, 2011, Marzouki was elected President of the Republic by the Constituent Assembly. It was originally planned that he would hold the office for one year, after which there should be regular presidential elections according to the constitution, which has yet to be adopted. In fact, the process took significantly longer. Marzouki was confronted with numerous domestic and foreign policy challenges. His party, which together with the Islamic Ennahda party and the secular social democratic Ettakatol formed the “Troika” government, ran into serious difficulties due to the unsuccessful government work. By October 2014, 17 of its 29 MPs left the party and in some cases founded new political forces. When the new constitution was finally adopted at the end of January 2014, Marzouki described it as the “victory of the revolution over the dictatorship”. In the parliamentary elections in October 2014 , Marzouki's CPR was severely weakened and only sent four members to the new parliament .

Marzouki ran for re-election for a regular term under the new constitution in the 2014 presidential election in Tunisia . Although it was not officially supported by the Islamic party Ennahda , it was largely supported. In the first ballot on November 23, he reached second place with 33.43 percent of the vote, behind Essebsi with a good 39 percent, making it into the runoff election on December 21, 2014. In this he was defeated with 44.32 percent of the votes to Essebsi (55.68 percent), which is why he replaced him in this office on December 31, 2014.

Web links

Commons : Moncef Marzouki  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Personal website (Arabic / French) with curriculum vitae ( memento of February 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (French).
• Julian Assange : Marzouki. Episode Three. Conversation. In: The World Tomorrow , Russia Today , May 1, 2012 (English, 26 minutes).
• Edith Kresta, Renate Fisseler-Skandrani: Interview with Tunisia's President Moncef Marzouki: “You have to help, not pray”. In: Qantara.de , October 18, 2012.
• Marc Thörner : The chess players from Tunis. The Islamist, the President and the future of the Arabellion. Radio feature on Deutschlandfunk, July 9, 2013.
• Reed Kramer: Tunisian President Marzouki on Elections, Economy, and Regional Stability. A Conversation With Mohamed Moncef Marzouki. In: CFR.org , September 23, 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Parties agree on Marzouki. In: the daily newspaper , November 16, 2011.
2. ↑ The freedom fighter Marzouki is on target. In: tagesschau.de , December 12, 2011.
3. ↑ L'opposant tunisien Moncef Marzouki candidat à la présidentielle ( Memento of 22 January 2011 at the Internet Archive ) with AFP (French).
4. ^ Agreement on interim president in Tunisia. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , November 16, 2011.
5. ↑ Marzouki becomes the first democratically elected President of Tunisia. In: Die Zeit , December 12, 2011.
6. ↑ Ghassan Abid: The post-revolutionary Tunisia: impatience, unrest, infiltration. In: The European , February 2, 2012.
7. ^ Joachim Paul: The Tunisian parliamentary elections: An overview of the most important parties. In: Heinrich Böll Foundation (website), October 21, 2014.
8. ↑ Annette Steinich: Tunisia overcomes its crisis. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (online), January 28, 2014.
9. ^ Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki Declares Re-Election Bid. In: ENCA.com , September 20, 2014.
10. ↑ Les Résultats Préliminaires du Deuxième Tour de la Présidentielle. In: ISIE.tn (Electoral Commission), December 22, 2014; Safa Ben Said: Live Blog: Second Round Presidential Elections. ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Tunisia-live.com , December 21, 2014, updated December 22, 2014.