ABSTRACT
Salah Ben Youssef posed a serious threat beyond his opposition to the internal autonomy accords. Ben Youssef had been Minister of Justice in the Chenik government formed in August 1950 to negotiate a program of reforms much less ambitious than the 1955 accords and, therefore, his opposition to the internal autonomy accords could have been considered as a tactical difference. The legitimacy of the Tunisian state implicit in the positions of Bourguiba is multi-dimensional: legal, historical, and charismatic. The first newspaper article Bourguiba wrote, “Le Voile”, was published in January 1929 and dealt with the situation of women in Tunisia. This article marked his first foray into the public forum. The issue of women had, therefore, been shifted or at least linked to the national question; in other words, to the legitimacy of the political order.
