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Algeria’s Cloudy Future

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An Algerian woman leaves a voting booth before casting her vote at a polling station in Algiers, during  local elections on November 29, 2012. FAROUK BATICHE/AFP/Getty Images

An Algerian woman leaves a voting booth before casting her vote at a polling station in Algiers during local elections on November 29, 2012. FAROUK BATICHE/AFP/Getty Images

It looks like Algeria might be going through a transitional period. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was flown to hospital in Paris after suffering a mini-stroke on April 28. Although Bouteflika’s health troubles are nothing new (they have been the subject of debates since 2005), unlike on previous occasions when the news of his condition was kept under wraps, the stroke was announced publicly, fueling speculation among pundits. The views of political experts remain divergent, while some of them state that the president’s health will be an obstacle in running for a fourth term, others see this announcement as a tactical tool in preparing for another term. Some believe the announcement of the president’s ailing condition to be the regime tradition of preparing public opinion for a succession.

Speaking to The Majalla, France-based Algerian analyst Anouar Malek said, “Bouteflika won’t leave office because that would mean the fall of many heads that enjoy privileges under his regime.” He added that “it would also affect those who have found a favorable environment to indulge in corruption during his fourteen year reign.”

The Algerian constitution stipulates that if the President of the Republic is unable to carry out his duties due to a serious and long-lasting illness, the Constitutional Council will declare the office of President of the Republic vacant using detailed procedures. If Bouteflika becomes incapable of performing his duties, his replacement would have to be approved by the junta. “If Bouteflika remains in power ’til the end of his current term, he would obviously take part in choosing his successor,” Algerian political expert and former army officer Ahmed Adimi told The Majalla.

It is quite obvious that the Algerian government is not ready for a perfectly transparent presidential election. Since the country became independent in 1962, the military has always chosen the president, from Ahmed Ben Balla in 1962 to Mohamed Boudiaf, who was brought back from his exile in Morocco and later assassinated six months later on June 1992, to Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999.

Like his predecessors, Bouteflika belongs to the independence war generation, but he rules a country in which 70% of the population is under the age of thirty and who have very little memory of this era. “We have to give power to the new generation of rulers; the period of revolutionary legitimacy is over,” Hichem Aboud, writer and editor-in-chief of Mon Journal, said to The Majalla. It is clear that in an environment where the president is very close to the elite and strongly linked to the security forces, it might not be a bad idea to see the ascension of a younger generation into power. But any drastic change looks to be excluded in a country that suffered the Islamic uprising and bloody civil war in the 1990s, which caused more than 300,000 casualties.

“Most Algerians hope for a soft and a fair transition; they want a candidate who has sufficient energy for solving the country’s most complicated problems, but the successor has to go through political reforms gradually and avoid any drastic changes,” Geoff Porter, director of North Africa Risk Consulting, told The Majalla. In the mean time, there is already one official candidate for the 2014 presidential elections: former prime minister Ahmed Benbitour. Others may emerge when Bouteflika’s intentions towards running a fourth term are made clear.

Among the potential candidates are the current prime minster, Abdelmalek Sellal, and the seventy-year-old former head of government Mouloud Hamrouche, who well may receive support from Hocine Aït Ahmed, an iconic figure of the Algerian revolution. In the case that Bouteflika is unable to complete his current term, his temporary replacement until the elections will be the Senate chairman, Abd-el-Kader Bensalah.

Although Bouteflika’s last appearance in public was on April 17, at the funeral of a highly-ranked official, his presence in Algerian politics continues to dominate political discourse even while he is out of the public eye. His health has gone beyond being a permanent feature of Algerian politics, and has also raised the issue of media censorship in the country. Last Sunday, the Algerian authorities censored the newspapers Mon Journal and its Arabic version, Djaridati, for the first time in decades, after they printed information about president’s declining health.

For Hichem Aboud, head of both newspapers, the authority’s attitude confirms that the information they had on Bouteflika’s health was accurate.


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