,
Dag Hammarskjöld, in 1961 Essebsi's first involvement in politics came in 1941, when he joined the
Neo Destour youth organization in
Hammam-Lif. He went to France in 1950 to study law in
Paris. In April 1981, he came back to the government under
Mohamed Mzali as
Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving until September 1986. Essesbi nevertheless has been described as someone who had "remained at a distance from Ben Ali" since his leaving politics in 1991, a move significant for "contribut[ing] to his credibility and acceptance" in the years following the 2011 revolution, the post-Ben Ali era. On 5 May accusations of the former Interior Minister
Farhat Rajhi that a
coup d'etat was being prepared against the possibility of the Islamic party
Ennahda Party winning the
Constituent Assembly election in October. This, again, led to several days of fierce anti-Government protests and clashes on the streets.
2014 elections Following his departure from office, Caïd Essebsi founded the secular
Nidaa Tounes party, which won a plurality of the seats in the
October 2014 parliamentary election. He was also the party's candidate in the country's first free presidential elections, in November 2014. On 22 December 2014, official election results showed that Essebsi had defeated incumbent President
Moncef Marzouki in the second round of voting, receiving 55.68% of the vote. After the polls closed the previous day, Essebsi said on local television that he dedicated his victory to "the martyrs of Tunisia".
President of Tunisia Essebsi was sworn in as president on 31 December 2014 at the age of 88, he was the first freely elected president of modern Tunisia. He played a vital role in helping ensure that, more than any other Arab state, the North African country preserved many of the essential gains of the
Arab spring movement, which began in Tunisia originally. On 3 August 2016, Essebsi appointed
Youssef Chahed as a prime minister as the parliament withdrew confidence from
Habib Essid's government. In 2017, he called for legal amendments to the inheritance law to ensure equal rights for men and women, and he called for Tunisian women to be able to marry non-Muslims, which he believed to be not in direct conflict with
Sharia nor with the Tunisian constitution. In 2018, he proposed a revision of Tunisian electoral law, which he felt contained many shortcomings going against the principles of the 2011 revolution. On 13 August 2018, he promised also to submit a bill to parliament soon which would aim to give women equal inheritance rights with men, as debate over the controversial topic of inheritance reverberated then throughout the Muslim world. Not long before his death, concerning the economic crisis of Tunisia (widely believed to be the foremost political problem in the country in the post-revolutionary era), he declared that the year 2018 would be difficult, but that the hope of economic revival was still possible. Beji Caid Essebsi was recognized for his role in reinforcing democratic advances in the face of
economic hardship and
terrorism. File:Secretary Kerry Meets With Tunisian President Essebsi (29756854516).jpg|Essebsi with U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry (19 September 2016 in New York City) File:G7 Taormina Paolo Gentiloni Beji Caid Essebsi handshake 2017-05-27.jpg|Essebsi with
Prime Minister of Italy Paolo Gentiloni in May 2017. File:Group photo G7 2017 Italy.jpg|Essebsi at the
43rd G7 summit in 2017. ==Illness and death==