Algeria's long-ruling president is cruising to victory in the polls. But the outside world shouldn't be fooled: The authorities are losing control.
n April 17,
2014, Algerians will head to the polls to vote for their president. Regardless
of the actual desires of the electorate, the Algerian military regime that
stands behind the 77-year-old incumbent, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is pushing him
towards a fourth term. Counting on
his physical inability to rule on his own, they are hoping to keep control over
his succession and any subsequent regime change.
The election
outcome will not, however, disguise the fact that this ruling configuration is
already deep in a transitional crisis. Since the military seized power in a
coup in 1992, it has been unable to create legitimate power-sharing mechanisms.
Until now, it has mainly relied on tools aimed at maintaining the status quo.
The army and the intelligence services have granted wide-ranging powers to the
presidency but have in fact continued to govern by proxy. They have granted
amnesties to insurgent Islamists with the intent of avoiding a broader
reckoning with the traumas of the past. And they have continued to use the redistribution
of natural resource rents to corrupt society.
While this
strategy probably helped the regime to survive, it now stands in the way of a
much-needed renewal. The leadership's focus on retaining power has produced
countless problems.
Growing street protests and rising
inner-regime conflicts are compelling Algeria's rulers to redistribute power
yet again in order to stay in place.
Growing
street protests and rising inner-regime conflicts are compelling Algeria's
rulers to redistribute power yet again in order to stay in place. The sense of
crisis is compounded by an imminent generational shift. Bouteflika is too sick to finish his
potential fourth mandate. Gaid Salah, the army chief-of-staff, and Tewfik
Mediene, the head of the intelligence services, the Département du
Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), are 78 and 74, respectively. Whether the
transition to come is conducted under the guidance of the army or negotiated
with demonstrators, the image of stability Algerian rulers have tried to convey
to the international community for so many years can no longer be regarded as a
given.
The first
big problem that the regime must address is what will replace the all-powerful
presidential office. In 1999, the army and the DRS top generals agreed to
appoint Bouteflika to the presidency. Thanks to the exploitation of his
civilian credentials, they built a governing system that prevented challenges
to their questionable legitimacy after the coup d'état they had staged seven
years earlier in the wake of a national election that had been won by Islamists. Acting in the
name of "peace, reconciliation, and stability," Bouteflika
marginalized the parliament, ruled by presidential decree, co-opted the
opposition, and revised the constitution to eliminate term limits.
Current
elections show that this monopolistic system of presidential governance has
made the emergence of a successor impossible. Despite their DRS support,
pro-government parties have proved unable to offer an alternative candidate.
The army
could, perhaps, choose once again to fill the presidency with a figure who
appears, like Bouteflika once did, to stand above the political fray. The
leading candidate for such a scenario is Ali Benflis, a former prime minister
who has now emerged as Bouteflika's current challenger. But Benflis won't find
it easy to give the illusion of new, reformist governance. Bouteflika has
multiplied the number of regime clienteles within the bureaucracy, post-civil
war businesses, and state-orchestrated "civil society" groups, while
simultaneously depriving them of any real political obligations. As a result,
these groups focus on the capture of public funds, and show little inclination
to make contributions to the renewal of the system.
Moreover,
the president's three terms, not to
mention the potential fourth, have tarnished the international
reputation of Algeria's elections, which is crucial to maintaining the façade
of democracy.
Another
problem is the unresolved legacy of
Algeria's civil war, which officially ended in 1999. Although the regime
ultimately succeeded in crushing the Islamist insurgency, the failure to
implement a full-fledged truth and reconciliation process
has had negative effects on security management. In the early 2000s, the
president enacted amnesty policies for former Islamist insurgents while failing
to implement any broader transitional justice
policies; to the contrary, he explicitly guaranteed the impunity of the
security forces. He has also continued the 1990s strategy of the DRS aiming at
suppressing any peaceful demonstrations in the name of stability and the fight
against terrorism. This alliance between Bouteflika and the DRS is beginning,
however, to show signs of strain. Over the past few years, distrust has
deepened and competition grown within the security apparatus, leading to major
breakdowns, such as a failed suicide attack on Bouteflika in 2007, the
assassination of the police chief Ali Tounsi in 2010, the January 2013
terrorist attacks in the town of Tiguentourine, and the leaking of DRS
documents on corruption cases involving Bouteflika's entourage.
These cases
have escaped the regime's control and are now subject to international
investigation. In an effort to regain the upper hand, the president's office
recently announced that it had commenced restructuring of the DRS under the
supervision of a "neutral and professionalized" army.
It is hard to believe government
claims, however, that allowing the army to mediate the conflict between
Bouteflika and the DRS will solve the problems arising from the intervention of
the security forces in the country's political life.
It is hard
to believe government claims, however, that allowing the army to mediate the
conflict between Bouteflika and the DRS will solve the problems arising from
the intervention of the security forces in the country's political life. Nor
will this address the rising crime rate -- a direct consequence of the regime's
voluntary weakening of judicial institutions. Smuggling is proliferating, as
are kidnappings and deadly tribal clashes like in the southern city of
Ghardaia. The security services seem powerless.
The regime's
redistribution of rents from the sale of oil and natural gas has enabled it to
enlarge its social base. This strategy has led, however, to ever-greater
demands for redistribution than can now be met by the government. The lack of
transparent rules for the allocation of resources has favored the emergence of
corrupt importers and bureaucratic networks that are now competing with the
government itself for public funds and the control of informal economies. The
government's irrational policies on the awarding of jobs, houses, or subsidies
without any attempts to control inflation or speculation are also undermining
the regime's legitimacy (which has traditionally derived to a large extent from
its status as the arbiter of rents). The government's position is likely to
deteriorate further in the years to come, given that oil and gas revenues are
set to decline.
The lack of
an Arab Spring-style uprising against Bouteflika does not mean that
contestation has disappeared. Disillusioned Algerians reject the binary
opposition of revolution or pseudo-democracy. They are increasingly resorting
to demonstrations, riots, sit-ins, protest
marches, uprisings, strikes, hunger
strikes, and even immolations; in so doing they are aiming less to overthrow
the regime than to create leverage for negotiations. In such ways, they
pressure the government to live up to its responsibility to provide public
goods, such as local development, health, housing, employment, or safety. The
thousands of protests taking place in Algeria each year should be understood as
an effort to renegotiate citizenship from the margins and to enforce indirect
accountability on unreliable representatives.
Among the
most prominent figures of this contestation are non-legalized independent
workers' unions. Their strikes can paralyze the country, also undermining the
state's argument that it has benefited society by creating massive public
sector employment at low wages. The unemployed, as well as a growing number of
citizens' groups, have organized numerous demonstrations to draw attention to
patterns of injustice as well as to criticize the government's claim that its
control is based on the maintenance of stability and the fight against
terrorism. The Barakat ("Enough!") Movement
is now organizing public demonstrations against both a fourth Bouteflika
mandate and the intelligence service's omnipresent role. (The photo above shows
Barakat protesters rallying in downtown Algiers on March 27.)
Boycott
campaigns (some even organized by Islamist and leftist parties formerly
co-opted by the regime) and public demonstrations are intensifying. The
opposition is limiting its criticism to Bouteflika, but the majority of the
Algerians who plan to abstain from the coming election do not believe that an
alternate president will be enough to satisfy their demands.
To calm down
protesters and boycotters, the current post-Bouteflika scenario imagined by the
regime may consider the option of a controlled transition period outside of
electoral mechanisms. In the most likely scenario, Bouteflika could become
incapacitated, withdrawing in favor of a challenger who will rule the country
in his stead. This adjunct role could go to an army-backed candidate or to a
supposedly apolitical new generation of army officers. Whichever group or
leader assumes this function may also lead a new transition council that
includes parties opposed to a fourth mandate. This approach will give the
illusion that both Bouteflika and the head of the DRS (which has rooted in the
press it controls the idea that it won't intervene in elections this time) have
been marginalized and that the political and social conflicts inherited from
the civil war have been resolved. Needless to say, that will not be the case
unless there is a clear agreement on the delineation of military and civilian
powers, an independent transitional justice process that addresses the numerous
outrages experienced by Algerians over the years, and an end to populist
economic governance.
The most
urgent need now is to allow Algerians to reconnect with each other on the basis
of a new transitional pact monitored by neutral and transparent institutions.
The United States and the European Union justify their support to Bouteflika
and the military by arguing that there is no organized alternative to the
current system to ensure stability. They should understand that such an
alternative will only be built through an institutionalized process of
transparent negotiations and consultation. This needs to be done now, before
the current consensus on the need for a nonviolent transition among protesters,
opposition parties, and security forces collapses.
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