President: Zine El Abidine BEN ALI

His picture is all over Tunisia, from the smallest shop to multi-story buildings such as this old French fort.

This is taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/country_profiles/791969.stm

President Ben Ali won a fourth five-year term in October 2004, in the second multi-party presidential elections since independence. Official results gave him nearly 95% of the vote. The main opposition group, the Democratic Progressive Party, pulled out two days before the vote saying its participation would only legitimize a masquerade of democracy.

Mr Ben Ali, from the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), had been due to retire in 2004 but changes to the constitution allowed him to run for two more terms. Born in 1936 in Hammam Sousse, Mr Ben Ali was Tunisia's ambassador in Warsaw in 1980 and became prime minister in October 1987.

He was sworn in as the new president in 1987, after doctors declared President Habib Bourguiba unfit to govern because of senility.