During a visit to the Ivory Coast, [Jacques Chirac] once called "multi-partyism" a "kind of luxury," which his host, president-for-life Felix Houphouet-Boigny, clearly could not afford. During a visit to Tunisia, he proclaimed that since "the most important human rights are the rights to be fed, to have health, to be educated and to be housed," Tunisia's human rights record is "very advanced" -- never mind the police who beat up dissidents. "Africa is not ready for democracy," he told a group of African leaders in the early 1990s.