Although he was prevailed upon to legalize opposition parties in 1981, Tunisia remained for all intents and purposes a one-party state. The Destourian Socialist Party, in alliance with the trade unions, swept all of the seats in parliament. The opposition was disgusted; it boycotted the next elections, in 1986. In the 1980s the economy performed poorly. In 1983 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced the government to raise the price of bread and semolina, causing severe hardship and protest riots. In this situation, the Islamic Tendency Movement (MTI) under Rashid al-Ghannushi provided popular leadership. Civil disturbances, including those by the Islamists, were repressed by government security forces under General Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The government persisted in following its program; Ben Ali was named prime minister. Ben Ali ascended to the office of President on 7 November 1987, after attending physicians to the former president filed an official medical report declaring Habib Bourguiba medically incapacitated and unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency. Two of the names given to Ben Ali's rise to the presidency include "the medical coup d'état" and the "Jasmine Revolution". In conformity with Article 57 of the Tunisian Constitution, Ben Ali became acting president pending elections in 1989. The country had faced 10% inflation, external debt accounting for 46% of GDP and a debt service ratio of 21% of GDP, in addition to a bombing campaign and attempted government overthrow, for which 76 members of the radical “Islamic Tendency Movement” were convicted in 1987. In 1999 Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that "In 1985-1987 we organized a kind of coup in Tunisia, putting president Ben Ali as head of state, replacing Burghiba ("sic") who wanted to flee". Bourguiba, although a symbol of anticolonial resistance, was considered not capable to lead his country anymore, and his reaction to the raising Islamic integralism was deemed "a bit too energetic" by Martini: Bourguiba's threat to execute the suspects might have had strong negative implications in the neighbouring countries. Acting under directives of Bettino Craxi, Italian prime minister, and Giulio Andreotti, foreign minister, Martini claims to have brokered the accord that lead to the peaceful transition of powers. Bettino Craxi had visited Algeria in November 1984, being warned by the president Chadli Benjedid that Algeria was ready to invade that region of Tunisia that was crossed by the pipeline towards Italy, if Bourguiba wasn't able to guarantee the stability of his own country.