Ishraf Chebil; the Lady who Stole the Lights from her Husband, the Tunisian President!

A French magazine, when referring to the most prominent wives of Arab presidents (like  the Egyptian Intisar al-Sisi and the Syrian Asma al-Assad), spoke about Ichraf Chebil, the wife of Tunisian President Kais Said. "Chebil  has absolute privacy," said John Afrique, which was not the case of former Tunisian presidents' wives.

In September 2019, during the first round of the presidential elections, Tunisians discovered that Ichraf Chebil Said would be the country's ninth first lady.

Under the Lights

The French magazine pointed out that "Chebil stole the spotlight while she was in the company of her husband Said, who came to vote."

At the time, Chebil Said was not known to the general public, and most comments were focused on her appearance. She was simple with blond steady hair, and she was at that time a judge at the Tunis Court of Appeal.

The magazine stated that "Chebil was invisible throughout the election campaign, and remained so after her husband's election."

This first lady will not actually become a First Lady, and she does not hold the title on the promise of the elected candidate Kais Said because he believes that the status of ‘’ first lady’’ has no legal existence saying that "All Tunisian women are first women."

Born in Sfax 48 years ago, Ishraf Chebil Said has become a judge like her father.

"Chebel was an excellent student in Sousse at the French School and then at the Faculty of Law and Political Science, where  she met the person who will become her husband and who is 15 years older than her," she pointed out. The presidential couple said that their marriage is the fruit of a love story and they currently have 3 children: Sarah, Omar and Mona.

Rare Appearance

Judge Ishraf Chebil is a graduate of criminal sciences, and she was an advisor to the Tunis Court of Appeal, then the vice president of the Court of First Instance in the capital. The head of the Supreme Judicial Council, Youssef Bouzakher, confirmed in September 2020 that Mrs. Chebil, “the first judge who settled in Carthage and did not stop working.’’ 

Contrary to what was planned at the beginning of his term, his wife stopped working without being paid for 5 years out of respect for the independence of the judiciary.

In November 2020, a statement issued by the Council of the Judicial Authority stated that Chebil would finally be appointed at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies in Tunis. 

When it comes to the role of the first lady, Kais Said, kept his words when the first appearance of the judge after the elections came on the same day that her husband assumed the presidency, at the reception at the Carthage Palace. 

On August 13, 2020, on the occasion of National Women's Day, her presence was noticed, and it was somewhat overshadowed by her husband's anti-inheritance rhetoric. Since then, Ichraf has appeared very rarely in the media and does not interfere in any of her husband's activities. This dim appearance contradicts Tunisian traditions, where the first ladies occupied a central position, as Wassila Bourguiba, Habib Bourguiba's wife, who even appointed some of her relatives in the government.

Leila Trabelsi, the wife of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was considered one of the main culprits in the country and she has now been living in Saudi Arabia since the revolution and an international arrest warrant was issued to be judged.