Algerian prime minister calls Arab spring a 'plague'

Ahmed Ouyahia's election campaign speech backfires as Libyan government summons ambassador to complain

• Brian Whitaker
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 May 2012 14.52 BST

The Algerian prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, addresses supporters at a campaign rally. Photograph: Mohamed Messara/EPA

What was meant to be the highlight of the government's election campaign – a mass rally in Algiers at the weekend addressed by prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia – seems to have backfired. Ouyahia's speech was certainly memorable, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

Harking back to the country's independence struggle against France, he said: "The Arab spring for me is a disaster. We don't need lessons from outside. Our spring is Algerian, our revolution of 1 November 1954."

Unlike the glorious days of 1954, the current Arab spring is "a plague" sweeping the region, he told voters. Its effects can be seen, he said, in "the colonisation of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the partition of Sudan and the weakening of Egypt".

"The revolutions that engulfed brotherly and friendly countries such as Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia, Mali, Libya and Egypt are not accidental but are the work of Zionism and NATO," he continued. "The NATO countries grant visas to young people according to their objectives, to train in new technologies to create unrest."

Among those offended by this was Libya's transitional government, which on Monday summoned the Algerian ambassador to complain about the prime minister's denigration of their uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

Inside Algeria, evocations of old-style nationalism and anti-colonialism also have far less appeal than in the past. Such rhetoric, a correspondent for the Associated Press observed, "has little resonance with the 70% of the population that is under the age of 30 and afflicted by a 20% unemployment rate".

And far from being shocked at the idea of getting visas to train in new technologies abroad, many jobless young Algerians would be delighted by such an opportunity.

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To insult the millions of people bravely demanding their freedom and their calls for a true democracy a "plague" and to invoke fear in the idea that the Arab Spring is merely a Zionist conspiracy, is a clear sign of desperation on behalf of  the Algerian government to quell any notion of radical change that they know will inevitably arise.