Columbia Center for Oral History Portal > Oral history interview with Noomane Fehri, 2015Biographical NoteNoomane Fehri was minister of information and communication technologies in the Habib Essid cabinet, from 2015 to 2016. He was a member of the National Constituent Assembly from 2011 to 2014 as the representative of the political party Afek Tounes for the Nabeul governorate. He co-founded Afek Tounes in 2011. Prior to his political career, in 2010 he founded an international consulting firm in Tunisia in the field of information and communication technologies. He has also held management positions in multinationals such as Schlumberger Limited, KPMG and Atos
Scope and ContentsIn the first session of his interview, Noomane Fehri describes his experience of the Tunisian Revolution, which included an impromptu, impassioned, and indefinite return to Tunisia from working abroad in order to start the political party Afek Tounes. Fehri describes the coordination of and discussion among party members, most of whom were diasporic Tunisians who had been educated and made their lives abroad. Fehri narrates his experience as a Bardo sit-in'er, and shares a story of police brutality against young revolutionaries. In the second session, Fehri sheds light on various parts of the national dialogue. He describes the landscape of political parties in the early stages of the transition, and the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet's role in bringing them to the negotiating table. He speaks to the tensions and the specter of an Egyptian scenario as the sit-in of parliamentarians in the Bardo Square continued. Fehri then discusses the role of foreign embassies in the national dialogue, how many European ambassadors organized informal dinners or meetings that convened thought leaders and party organizers for deliberations on next steps
SubjectsAccess ConditionsCopyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2015
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