He still has not addressed a word to the Tunisians, but his family history and his Facebook account – since deleted – have already spoken for him. Retired from the Tunisian Central Bank (BCT) and unknown to the general public, Ahmed Hachani, 66, was appointed Prime Minister by Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed on the night of Monday August 1 to Tuesday August 2. He replaces Najla Bouden, in office for almost two years, dismissed from office on August 1 by a terse press release from the Presidency of the Republic.
Two years after assuming full powers on July 25, 2021 – the day of the Republic Day proclaimed in 1957 – to “rectify the process” started since the revolution, Kaïs Saïed now appoints a fervent defender of the beylical monarchy (system of dynastic power inherited from the Ottoman Empire) as Prime Minister, one day before the commemoration of the 120th anniversary of Habib Bourguiba, first President of the Tunisian Republic.
Although the reasons for this appointment are still not revealed, one thing is certain: Kaïs Saïed does not miss an opportunity to use symbols of Tunisian history. Ahmed Hachani and Kaïs Saïed are certainly of the same generation and both trained lawyers, but the weight of the family history of the new tenant of the Kasbah – a descendant of one of the beys of Tunis and whose father was sentenced to died and executed for a coup attempt against Habib Bourguiba at the end of 1962 – is certainly no stranger to his appointment by a president who does not mind rewriting history.
Great-grandson of Ali III Bey
“Imagine a Tunisia that would not have given birth to that deceitful Bourguiba”, “even Franco knew that the outcome could only be a royalist parliamentary regime. (…) Wake up Tunisians. The beylical monarchy is our only salvation”… on his Facebook account deleted the day after his appointment, Ahmed Hachani clearly expressed – at least until 2019 – his rejection of the republican regime and his aversion to the one considered as the “Father of Independence”. Born on October 4, 1956, a few months after the proclamation of independence but still under the beylical regime, the new prime minister did not hide his pride in being himself the great-grandson of Ali III Bey, who reigned under the French protectorate, until the dawn of the 20th century.
Ahmed Hachani had not yet celebrated his first birthday when the Constituent Assembly proclaimed the Republic on July 25, 1957 and elected Habib Bourguiba as its head, after a campaign hostile to the monarchy orchestrated in the press by the Neo-Destour party. in power. “The Husseinite dynasty, of Turkish origin, has reigned over Tunisia for two and a half centuries. It has had time to wither and it is a dead tree that the Tunisian people and their leaders will uproot,” wrote the newspaper L’Action two days earlier. Lamine Bey, the last monarch of Tunisia, was then deposed and ordered to leave his palace without delay. His property and that of his family seized. He is under house arrest and ends his days in a cramped apartment in the capital.
A few years later, in 1962, Ahmed Hachani was 6 years old when his father, Salah Hachani, joined a group of former resistance fighters and officers to prepare a coup against Bourguiba. This group, led among others by Lazhar Chraïti, a Tunisian nationalist fighter, did not digest the heavy defeat suffered by the Tunisian army against the French soldiers still present during the battle of Bizerte in July 1961. The grievance is added to the authoritarian turn taken by the “supreme fighter”, who alienated – and liquidated – his former comrades in struggle since his accession to power.
A career at the Central Bank of Tunisia
Salah Hachani, grandson of Ali III Bey and lieutenant of the beylical guard until the establishment of the Republic in 1957, had first participated in the creation of the Republican Tunisian army on behalf of its new president . But very quickly, he was removed from the palace, sent to the Congo – then under Belgian occupation – then appointed commander of the garrison of Gafsa, in the south of the country. Ahmed Hachani and his six brothers and sisters then lived with their mother, Thérèse Le Gall, French of Breton origin, in Tunis. According to the testimony of one of his brothers, Hédi Hachani, their father was often absent.
In December 1962, the life of the family changed when Lazhar Chraïti’s group was denounced and arrested for plotting against state security. After a speedy trial, Ahmed Hachani’s father and nine of his co-accused were executed on January 24, 1963. In an interview with Ouest-France in 2012, the older brother of the current Tunisian Prime Minister recounts how he learned ” over the radio that his father had just been executed at 5 a.m.”. According to this testimony, the whole family was chased out of their villa while the children were mocked by their teachers who called them “sons of plotters”. Thérèse Le Gall then manages to find work and support her children, despite many difficulties.
After the revolution, the Hachani family – like several families of those convicted in the 1962 conspiracy case – filed a file with the Truth and Dignity Commission (IVG) in charge of the transitional justice process, in order to obtain reparations and justice for their father, more than fifty years after his execution. In January 2013, the Ministry of Defense, on the instructions of the then Head of State, Moncef Marzouki, finally handed over what remained of the remains of Salah Hachani to his family. His burial in the Martyrs Cemetery, near Tunis, was however refused, Commander Hachani and his companions still being considered putschists.
According to his official biography published by the Tunisian news agency TAP, Ahmed Hachani spent his entire career at the Central Bank of Tunisia until his retirement in 2017. Since then, he has expressed his political positions on his Facebook account. personal at least until 2019. If his belated support for Kaïs Saïed that year was not yet quite complete, he expressed in turn his aversion to Bourguiba’s legacy, the “ultrafeminists” who would be “scared to death of Kaïs Saïed” or even on the “Islamist danger”, while dreaming of a Tunisia where the beylical monarchy would still be alive.