Algeria: The revolution that never was

Does 'progressive leadership' or something more complex and sinister explain why Algeria's 'Spring' never materialised?

The 'Arab Spring' of 2011 brought down autocratic governments across North Africa and the Middle East. But, despite widespread street protests that initially threatened to spark a Tunisian or Egyptian style revolt, an expected uprising in Algeria failed to materialise. President Abdelazziz Bouteflika's regime - often accused of being one of the most repressive in the region - promised modest political reform and managed to hold onto power. Earlier this month it claimed to have delivered on these promises when parliamentary elections were held, in which the ruling National Liberation Front (or FLN) won an overwhelming majority of the votes. Although opposition groups were quick to deride the poll as a sham and to accuse the government of manipulating the results, European and American observers called the poll a step toward democracy. So what has been going on in Algeria for the last year? Did it genuinely, as the government would claim, avoid the upheaval that swept through the rest of North Africa last year because of the Bouteflika regime's 'progressive leadership'? Or has something darker and more complex been going on - a story that opponents and human rights activists say has more to do with a wary population traumatised by the country's violent past and living in fear of its secret police?  People & Power wanted to find out, but getting into Algeria is difficult - not least because Al Jazeera has been denied official access to the country since 2004. Nevertheless, when our requests for journalist visas were ignored, our filmmakers managed to get in unofficially and were able to work discreetly. Producer Caroline Pare describes what they found. Producer's view In the capital Algiers at least, life seemed freer and more lively than we expected. The shops and cafes were full and, superficially at least, this did not seem to be a place on the cusp of revolution. It felt like a country coming out of something very bad and now quite determinedly making the best of a difficult situation. Why did the expected uprising fail to materialise in Algeria?[EPA] But when we began meeting human rights activists, we got a much better sense of what ordinary Algerians are up against and what they really think. To start with, the military and intelligence people, the DRS, are omnipresent, so meetings had to be arranged surreptitiously. On one occasion, for example, a contact identified himself at a street corner by using pre-arranged code words. Then he asked us to follow him very discreetly and at a distance to the Metro, past the police and the surveillance cameras, onto a train and out to his tiny apartment in the suburbs. Only when safely behind closed doors did he feel able to speak freely about the repression and the many economic problems the country faces - a housing crisis, rocketing unemployment and spiralling food prices. He told us things were so bad that desperate young people were burning themselves alive. There were around 130 self-immolations in Algeria last year. Indeed just before the election in the seaside town of Jijel, a 25-year-old man, Hamza Rechak, set himself on fire, in despair at having been prevented by police from selling cosmetics from his small stall and then at being taunted by them. His death caused outrage in the town and sparked a riot as young men attacked the police station in fury. Other Algerians told us that theirs was actually the first country to have an 'Arab Spring'. In 1988, the people took to the streets and forced the government to hold a free and fair election. After the first round of voting it became apparent that the opposition Islamic FIS party was set to win. But it was not to be because the military intervened. The country turned in on itself and entered a 'dark decade' of bloody violence that saw an estimated 200,000 people killed. To this day it casts a fearful shadow. The chaos enabled the DRS to get a stranglehold on the country and the body politic that democracy activists say persists to this day. So the elections that were held this month do not seem to have much credibility among voters. Indeed we heard from various political analysts before the election that they could predict the turnout - based on what the government required to make the process acceptable in international eyes - and sure enough they were pretty close to the 43 per cent officially announced. The governing party won overwhelmingly. In Algeria, we are told, everything is preordained by the powerful shadow state, the DRS. And it does not brook criticism. Algeria is a country rich in oil and gas reserves, earning it perhaps $200bn each year. But there are few jobs in the oil industry for Algerians and unemployment and poverty are real problems. Youth unemployment is at over 40 per cent. The level of desperation on the ground is such that discontent boils up into street protests on a daily basis - we were told that there were 40,000 such protests last year alone against housing, food prices, police corruption etc. Yet Algerians have not yet turned to outright revolution. We began to understand why when talking to people about the 'dark decade' and the terrors they lived through that still traumatise their lives. To put it simply, people are scared. We spoke to families whose loved ones were killed or vanished during those years. As many as 20,000 of these 'disappeared' are still being sought by their families, according to a group called SOS Disparu that supports families looking for their loved ones. They introduced us to one woman whose husband was snatched from their doorstep 18 years ago. She has heard nothing officially of him since then, despite writing and visiting all the government offices she could think of. The only information came from fellow detainees who tell her he was probably horrendously tortured. All these years later the memory of her husband still moves her to tears. Will all this change? We were taken to see Dr Salah-Eddine Sidhoum, an orthopaedic surgeon and one of Algeria's most respected opposition figures. As we sat in his study, the TV in the corner was showing a live broadcast of the funeral of Algeria's first post-independence president. We asked Sidhoum why the events that shook the rest of the Arab world in 2011 seemed to have passed his country by. His response was emphatic. "Algeria is not an exception," he said. "The revolution will come here in Algeria sooner or later - it's just a question of time." http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2012/05/2012516145457232336.html

Algeria's election was a fraud

If any hopes for democracy remained for the country, widespread election fraud have quashed them. Last Modified: 15 May 2012 19:05

Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has described revolutions of Arab Spring as a 'plague' [EPA]

London, United Kingdom - The results of Algeria's May 10 legislative elections have been met with such fury by Algerians that some analysts believe that these will be the last elections held under the current regime. If there were any hopes for democracy still remaining in the country, these elections snuffed them out. Allegations of electoral fraud have been widespread since the government announced on May 11 that the turnout was 42.9 per cent, with the government's ruling parties winning an overwhelming majority of the votes. The Green Alliance of Islamist parties accused the government of "perpetrating widespread fraud". Similar allegations were made by the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD). The Algerian National Front said it would challenge the results in the constitutional court over what party leader Moussa Touati called "blatant fraud", while Ali Laskri, leader of the opposition Socialist Front Forces (FFS), said that Thursday's vote "was riddled with irregularities". Abderrazak Mukri, a spokesman for the Alliance, said that the results given by the Interior Ministry differ dramatically from those seen by the Alliance's observers. He told reporters: "There is a process of fraud on a centralised level to change the results that is putting the country in danger. … We are not responsible for what could happen." Electoral fraud by Algeria's government is normal practice and expected. All elections since 1992, when the regime annulled Algeria's only truly democratic elections, have been rigged. What seems to have incensed Algerians about these latest elections is the scale and audacity of the fraud, both in the fabrication of the turnout figure and in the distribution of the votes. Fabrication When I forecast the election result on May 9, I said that the government would come up with a much higher turnout. The "official" figure is usually put about three times higher than the "real" turnout. I predicted that the real turnout on May 10 would be in the range of 10-15 per cent, and that the official turnout figure would be 46 per cent (in the range of 40-50 per cent). As it was, the turnout was given as 42.9 per cent. The government would like to have given a figure that could have been rounded up to "about half", hence my forecast of 46 per cent. However, going much higher than 42.9 per cent on such a low real turnout could well have triggered demonstrations and violence. Parliamentary elections in Algeria On the other hand, a figure below 40 per cent would be interpreted as an admission of failure. Thus, a figure in the lower 40s was deemed sufficiently low to avoid unrest, but sufficient to enable the government to claim "success" on the grounds that 42.9 per cent is an improvement on the 2007 turnout of 37 per cent. What was the "real" turnout? On the basis of the government's usual threefold inflation of turnout, the real turnout figure would be 14.3 per cent. In fact, as more information from observers on the ground becomes available, it looks as if a figure of around 15 per cent might be about right. Professor Abdulali Rezaki of Algiers University was quoted as saying that he thought 85 per cent of voters would boycott the elections, while the RCD said the real turnout "did not exceed 18 per cent". Reports from around the country indicate that the vast majority of Algerians stayed away from polling stations in response to the calls of the FIS, AQIM, RCD, the Rachad Movement and countless youth, human rights, trade unions and other civil society organisations - in addition to many prominent personalities - to abstain. For example, a Reuters reporter stood for 45 minutes outside a polling station in Bab El Oued (Algiers) without seeing a single voter enter. The agency also reported that election officers at two other polling stations in the capital had said that about ten per cent of those registered to vote had shown up by mid-afternoon. At Laghouat, on the northern fringe of the Sahara, where the interior ministry gave the turnout figure at 4pm as 38 per cent, local observers, who had been keeping a close watch on the town's polling stations, gave the figure at that time as five per cent. Similar reports have been coming in from all over the country. In addition to this abstention, there are reports that 20-22 per cent of ballot forms were blank or despoiled. I believe that most of these were cast by people who did not want to vote but felt frightened into doing so. If these blank votes are added to the abstention, then the real vote reduces to just 11-12 per cent. Doctoring vote distribution The government's second fraud was to doctor the distribution of votes between parties. With the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) - which would have won the annulled 1992 election - banned from participating in these elections, it was widely believed that other Islamist parties, headed by the "Green Alliance" of Bouguerra Soltani's Movement of Society Peace (MSP), the al-Nahda and al-Islaf parties and followed by Abdallah Djaballah's Front for Justice and Development (FJD), would garnish the largest share of votes. They would be followed by the government's Front de Liberation National (FLN), with the Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND) of the highly unpopular Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, unlikely to get more than one or two per cent of the vote. Unofficial figures released by the Alliance in mid-afternoon were in line with this prediction. The FLN was heading for about 100 seats in the new 462-seat Assembly, with the Green Alliance close behind. The official results, released the next day, were met with incredulity and anger. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's FLN had won 220, or 47.6 per cent, of the seats, a considerable improvement on its position in the outgoing National Assembly, while the RND came second with 69 seats (14.7 per cent), giving the two government parties a massive 62.3 per cent domination of the Assembly. The Islamist parties, in contrast, managed only 59 seats between them. The Alliance won 10.4 per cent of the vote and 48 seats, while the early front-runner, Abdallah Djaballah's FJD, won a paltry 1.5 per cent and seven seats. Even FLN supporters found these figures hard to believe. One reason for that is because the party had been in a state of intense internal fighting for the previous few months. Many of its offices had closed and most of its campaign rallies had been reduced or cancelled in the face of public resentment and disinterest. Many FLN members were of the view that the party was "finished" and that it would be lucky to pick up 20 per cent of the vote. In that light, 47.6 per cent seems beyond belief. They, too, know that this figure has been manipulated. The second reason for incredulity at the FLN vote is simply a matter of political demography. With 21,664,345 registered voters, the government's figures mean that 9.29 million people voted, a figure which not only defies observations at polling stations, but means that 4.42 million of them voted for the FLN. If we add in the RND, then it means that 5.79 million Algerians voted for the two ruling government parties, both of which are resented and hated by the vast majority of citizens. If we reduce this figure by 20 per cent to take account of the spoiled ballots, we are still left with 4.63 million Algerians voting for a government that they are desperately keen to replace. Such a figure makes no sense. The mechanics of fraud Finally, there is the overwhelming question of how such electoral fraud could have taken place when the country, according to the government's version of events, was awash with foreign observers. The obvious point is that it is absolutely impossible for some 500 foreign observers to keep an eye on 48,546 polling stations. Neither can opposition party observers cover this number of stations. The opportunity for ballot stuffing and other irregularities, especially in remote areas, is immense. In addition, the system of "vote par procuration", whereby an estimated 600,000 - 700,000 people, mostly in the police, gendarmerie, military and administrative services, can have their votes cast for them by a designated family relative, officer or official, allows for substantial multiple voting. Moreover, with the Algerian government refusing to make the electoral roll accessible to foreign observer missions, it is impossible for them to check such irregularities even if they had the resources to do so. Reactions from the government The government's reaction to these results has been one of arrogant triumphalism, encapsulated in El Moudjahid's headline: "If there's a winner on this Algerian Spring day, it's undoubtedly the people." It went on to say: "In their millions, Algerians projected a good image of democracy, proving to the world that they are not disconnected from political life." Is real change taking effect in Algeria? Horizons, another pro-government newspaper, said the vote showed an "appeased and reconciled Algeria ... diametrically opposed to those who wreak chaos and support interference". In the run-up to the election, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia described the so-called Arab Spring as a "plague", which, he said, had resulted in "the colonisation of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the partition of Sudan and the weakening of Egypt". Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said that the "remarkable" turnout of 42.9 per cent confirmed Algeria's democratic credentials. He explained the large vote for the FLN as a sign that Algerians wanted the security of the government rather than "change", and that they had seen through "the false claims of the Islamists". Foreign reaction Algerians can draw little comfort from the reactions of Algeria's Western and Arab allies, whose support for Algeria since 1992 has been more about maintaining the present regime in power than encouraging democracy. The Arab League's 132-member observer mission said the election was "transparent, credible and well-organised", while the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation praised the "successful and democratic elections... held in an organised, transparent and peaceful manner". Neither recorded any irregularities. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Algeria's elections as "a welcome step in Algeria's progress toward democratic reform", while Britain's Foreign Secretary, William Hague, congratulated the people of Algeria "on the conduct of the elections and the progress they represent". Jose Ignacio Salafranca, head of the EU observer mission said that the vote was satisfactory and that "citizens were, in general, able to truly exercise their right to vote". Based on these readings, Algerians clearly have nothing to worry about. Jeremy Keenan is a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201251482813133513.html

Is Algeria immune to the 'Arab Spring'?

As the old ruling party wins a new parliamentary majority, we ask if change has bypassed Algeria. Inside Story Last Modified: 14 May 2012 11:15 inShare14 Email Print Share Feedback

Algeria's ruling National Liberation Front won almost half of the 462 seats in the Algerian parliament in Thursday's parliamentary elections. "[In terms of] reforms I think the Algerian authorities have introduced these kinds of reforms not necessarily to implement a democratic transition but it was basically window-dressing …." - Youcef Bouandel, an international affairs professor at Qatar University But will this new majority for the old ruling party mean that Algeria is now immune to the 'Arab Spring'? While the National Liberation Front - which has ruled Algeria since independence from France in the early 1960s - won 220 seats, the National Democratic Rally came second with 68 seats in the National People's Assembly. The Green Alliance - which had been widely predicted to do well - secured 48 seats. That is just three-quarters of the number it won in the last elections in 2007 - bucking the trend that has seen religious parties gain power across North Africa after the 'Arab Spring'. The Green Alliance says the elections were rigged to keep it out of power in a country that has experienced decades of violence between radical groups and government security forces. But Western countries and international monitors have largely praised the vote as a step in the right direction. Hanafi Wajih, the head of the Arab League's observer mission, said: "The election was free and transparent and the Algerian people have expressed their choice without coercion." "Unfortunately the good Algeria for the West is a weak Algeria and having it weak is by sponsoring diplomatically, helping politically, supporting even militarily and by other means, this regime." - Mohamed Larbi Zitout, the former Algerian deputy ambassador to Libya Jose Ignacio Salafranca, the EU mission's monitor-in-chief, noted some shortcomings but said: "There were more transparency criteria than in previous elections." And Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, praised the vote and, in particular, the high number of women elected as "a welcome step in Algeria's progress toward democratic reform". Prior to the elections, the government had portrayed the parliamentary contest as Algeria's 'Spring' - inviting 500 international observers and promising that the vote would be the freest in 20 years. But has the spirit of change witnessed in many parts of North Africa and the Middle East bypassed Algeria? Will the ruling party's success now make it less likely to introduce change? And has the government, as the opposition insists, missed an unprecedented opportunity for a peaceful political transition to democracy? Joining Inside Story, with presenter Stephen Cole, to discuss these issues are: Mohamed Larbi Zitout, the former Algerian deputy ambassador to Libya; Youcef Bouandel, a professor of International Affairs at Qatar University; and Malek Serrai, an international economist and former economic adviser to the Algerian president and a former regional adviser on international finance and trade for the UN. "We dislike what happened in Libya and we refuse to follow because we had our problem in 1998 … we already lost 200,000 people [in the civil war] we cannot again go through this kind of problem. We are really looking for security and stability." Malek Serrai, an international economist ALGERIA ELECTION: The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party won 220 of 462 seats in parliament It is the country's first election since the Arab Spring swept the region An estimated 25,800 candidates competed for the parliamentary seats There were 44 parties, 21 of them newly created, who campaigned for seats Voters cast their ballots at more than 48,000 polling stations An alliance of conservative parties only won 66 seats in parliament Algeria's interior ministry reported a 42 per cent voter turnout Officials said the vote was the most transparent ever and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president, described it as the dawn of a new era About 500 foreign election observers including from the EU, the African Union and the Arab League monitored the vote http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/05/201251465357500445.html