Tunisia's November 7, 1987 coup — in which Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali deposed the aging and increasingly erratic Habib Bourguiba by presenting a medical certificate declaring him unfit to govern — was a bloodless transfer of power, but a transfer nonetheless. Ben Ali's government made a habit of commemorating the date with official coinage, and by 2001 the series had become an established annual fixture of the Tunisian mint program. The French-legend variant exists alongside an Arabic-legend counterpart, the two issues distinguished by their inscriptions for separate collector markets.
Tunisia's November 7, 1987 coup — in which Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali deposed the aging and increasingly erratic Habib Bourguiba by presenting a medical certificate declaring him unfit to govern — was a bloodless transfer of power, but a transfer nonetheless. Ben Ali's government made a habit of commemorating the date with official coinage, and by 2001 the series had become an established annual fixture of the Tunisian mint program. The French-legend variant exists alongside an Arabic-legend counterpart, the two issues distinguished by their inscriptions for separate collector markets.