The first president of Djibouti. The first president Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who led Djibouti after the country's independence from France in 1977, and who stepped down in 1999, elected in the country's first multiparty presidential elections that year and was re-elected in 2005. When he entered politics in 1947, Gouled wanted Djibouti to remain part of France, but after his political party was banned in 1967 he began a peaceful campaign for independence. He served as prime minister for several months before becoming president. He oversaw the introduction of a Constitution that instituted multiparty politics in 1992, though a multiparty presidential election did not take place for seven more years. The latter period of Gouled's unbroken 22-year presidency was rocked by sporadic violence, as government forces clashed with the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy, a rebel movement composed of Afars, the country's second most powerful ethnic group after his own Issa tribe.