Background
Driss Guiga was born on August 21, 1924, at Testour, 50 miles south-west of Tunis.
Driss Guiga was born on August 21, 1924, at Testour, 50 miles south-west of Tunis.
Educated at Sadiki College, Tunis, he studied at Paris and Algiers to qualify as a lawyer and gain a degree in History. Admitted to the Bar at Tunis he practised law from 1948 to 1952.
He entered government service in 1952 as Chef de Cabinet to the Minister of Public Health. His responsibilities included the administration of hospitals, where he instituted many improvements and modernisation programmes. In 1956 he was transferred to the Ministry of the Interior as Inspector-General of Provincial Administration and then promoted two years later to be Director of Regional and Communal Administration. His success there resulted in his appointment as Director of National Security until December 1962.
For six years from January 1963 as Commissioner-General of Tourism and Thermalism he tried hard to put Tunisia on the European holidaymaker’s map. On September 8, 1969, he became Secretary of State for Public Health and Social Affairs and two months later entered the cabinet as Minister of Public Health, a post he retained after the government reshuffle on October 29, 1971.
Barrister-politician with a high reputation as an administrator. A tall, handsome figure with great charm who endured the rigours of internment at the Teboursouk detention centre during the independence struggle. A party official since he was 19 years of age, he has applied his organising skills not just to the health service but to regional administration and state security.