Editing Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (section)

===Succession confusions===
At about 6:00 pm local time, Prime Minister [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ghannouchi Mohammed Ghannouchi] went on state television to say:"Since the president is temporarily unable to exercise his duties, it has been decided that the prime minister will exercise temporarily the (presidential) duties."

However, this arrangement was very short lived, because early the following day (Saturday 15 January 2011) the Constitutional Court of Tunisia determined that Ben Ali was not "temporarily unable" to exercise his duties and that the presidency was in fact vacant. The arrangements he had made with the Prime Minister before leaving the country were found to be unconstitutional under article 57 of the constitution. The country's constitutional court, the highest legal authority on constitutional matters, announced the transition on Saturday, saying that [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fouad_Mebazaa Fouad Mebazaa] (the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_of_Parliament Speaker of Parliament]) had been appointed interim president.

Mebazaa took the oath in his office in parliament, swearing to respect the constitution in the presence of his senate counterpart, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abdallal_Kallel&action=edit&redlink=1 Abdallal Kallel], and representatives of both houses. It was also announced that the speaker of parliament would occupy the post of president temporarily and that elections would be held within a period of between 45 and 60 days.