Beji Caid Essebsi has been Prime Minister of Tunisia since February 2011. Emerging from retirement to assume the position, he was Tunisia's foreign affairs minister in the late 1980s and served as President of the Chamber of Deputies in the beginning of the 1990s, but retired from public life in 1994. Born to an upper-class family descended from the mamelukes who once ruled Tunisia, his political career has spanned several generations.
As Prime Minister, he faces expectations both from his constituents and the outside world. While he has been quick to change old laws limiting political freedoms, for example, he has been slower to effect any systemic change; for this, the same protestors who helped to oust Ben Ali have criticized his successor. Particularly troubling is the expanding unemployment rate, a key issue for Tunisia's young population, but a difficult problem for any interim government to solve.
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