Habib Bourguiba Zine El Abidine Ben Ali The 1987 Tunisian coup d'état involved the bloodless ousting of the aging President of Tunisia Habib Bourguiba on 7 November 1987, and his replacement as President by his recently appointed Prime Minister, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Political journalist Mezri Haddad summarised the report as follows: Officially aged 84,[a] Bourguiba fell asleep while receiving a foreign visitor.

[5] In justification of the coup, Prime Minister Ben Ali invoked Article 57 of the constitution,[2] as he assumed power.

[8] He paid tribute to the huge sacrifices that his predecessor had made, supported by brave men, in his service to the liberation and development of Tunisia.

Our people deserve a modern politics, based on a genuinely multi-party system incorporating a plurality of mass organisations.

"The Algerians were nervous about growing instability in Tunisia and were ready to intervene" because of the risks the situation presented to their own strategic interests.

Speaking in 1999 to Agence France-Press in Tunis: "There was no Italian manoeuvring or interference in the events that carried President Ben Ali to power in 1987".

The closeness of Craxi's own complicated and long standing relationship with the Tunisian political establishment led commentators to doubt his words, but the French journal Le Monde found no evidence against his version.

Craxi remained a close friend of Ben Ali, and died, while being prosecuted by the Italian justice system for the Tangentopoli scandal, in Tunisia (2000).

[13] Ben Ali took control of the ruling Socialist Destourian Party, renamed it and transformed it into the Democratic Constitutional Rally.