ahmed najib chebbi arabic french ahmed njib chebbi or simply najib chebbi born 30 july 1944 is a tunisian attorney and politicianchebbi is a prominent figure of the tunisian opposition movement in 1983 he founded the democratic progressive party which gained legal recognition in 1988 he is currently the leader of the democratic progressive party in 2006 maya jribi became the partys secretarygeneral the first woman to hold such office in tunisia in 2009 chebbi attempted to run as a candidate for president of tunisia but was barred from runningin response to former authoritarian president zine el abidine ben alis statement during the 20102011 tunisian protests promising 300000 new jobs would be created and criticizing the protests chebbi said that despite official claims of police firing in selfdefense that the demonstrations were nonviolent and the youths were claiming their rights to jobs and that the funeral processions for those killed on january 9 turned into demonstrations and the police fired at the youths who were at these processions he then criticised ben alis comments as the protesters were claiming their civil rights and there is no terrorist actno religious slogans while accusing ben ali of looking for scapegoats he further criticised the additional jobs offered as mere promisesfollowing the ousting of ben ali on 14 january 2011 prime minister mohammed ghannouchi contacted chebbi and other opposition leaders in hopes of creating a coalition government until elections can be held chebbi said he demanded parliamentary elections be held within six or seven monthson 15 january 2011 chebbi was noted by al jazeera as one of three potential successors the only one mentioned not to have been part of the ben ali government to become president of tunisia following the proposed 2011 general election to occur within six months it noted however that if he is to be a contender in the next presidential election he will need to widen his appealchebbi was named minister of regional development in the new government on 17 january 2011 but he resigned in march 2011 after less than two months in his post