Political Trends
On Nov. 29, Algerians went to the polls for the second time this year, this time to elect municipal and provincial councils. As is now usual, the election was greeted with indifference and cynicism by large swathes of the population – with the added disincentives, this time round, of torrential rain in many areas and, in the Béjaïa region, two moderately sized earthquakes. Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia nonetheless announced a turnout of 44.26% – very slightly higher than the turnout in the last local elections in 2007, and very close (many would say suspiciously close) to the forecast Ould Kablia himself had made two days previously. As usual, according to the official results, the FLN came out on top, with the RND not very far behind. Also as usual, there have been claims of fraud and ballot rigging by officials, which have been dismissed by the Interior Ministry.
True to form if not to reality, official news agency APS proclaimed the local elections “another step forward in strengthening democracy”. Those interested in the path the Algerian state is really taking, however, will have been looking to other, more meaningful events on the political calendar. On the one hand, there is the process of constitutional reform – as promised in President Bouteflika’s famous televised address of April 2011, in the midst of the first wave of the “Arab spring”. Ould Kablia announced on Nov. 21 that the ball is to be set rolling in the coming weeks with the appointment of a commission to draft proposed amendments to the constitution; the commission’s recommendations will be discussed by the government, perhaps in the second quarter of 2013 according to Ould Kablia, before being submitted for approval either by parliament or by referendum. And on the other hand, there is the presidential election – now less than a year and a half away.
Over the past few months, we have watched the fortunes of a number of possible contenders for the presidency unfold – or, perhaps, unwind. FLN leader Abdelaziz Belkhadem’s ambitions, it will be recalled, were an open secret, but his chances have been badly damaged by the open revolt against his leadership which has been festering within his party for months now. At the same time, RND leader Ahmed Ouyahia, long thought to have been DRS chief Mohamed Tewfik Médiène’s favoured candidate to succeed Bouteflika, seems to have been pushed into the background, especially since he was replaced as Prime Minister at the beginning of September. More recently, there had been some speculation that Public Works Minister Amar Ghoul, who this autumn set up his new party, the TAJ, apparently with the connivance of the authorities, was perhaps being groomed as a docile successor to Bouteflika – the skeletons in his closet from the corruption-ridden episode of the East-West motorway project making him all the easier for the DRS to control[1]. In mid-November, however, French-language daily Algérie News began to bring those skeletons out into the public eye, printing revelations of bribe-taking in connection with the East-West motorway project, implicating not only Ghoul, but also Belkhadem and Industry Minister Cherif Rahmani. The daily claimed to be in possession of « confidential files » and hinted that more revelations were to come, which suggests that it may have been fed the compromising information by the DRS, or elements within it, in a deliberate move to puncture any presidential ambitions Ghoul may have been harbouring. A former DRS officer and one-time presidential advisor says that Ghoul is now « toast » and Belkhadem marginalised, and confirms that the waning of Ouyahia’s star followed a serious falling-out between him and Tewfik.
The same former DRS officer went on to claim that Tewfik is now grooming Ali Benflis, Bouteflika’s unlucky challenger in the 2004 presidential election, to succeed him in the 2014 poll, describing Benflis as the « dominant figure » now within the FLN[2]. Interestingly, some days after the source made this claim in a private conversation, leading Arabic-language daily Al-Khabar (27/11/12) published an account of a meeting Ali Benflis had purportedly convened at his family home with a number of leading members of the FLN to announce his intention of running for president in 2014, now that he had received « assurances » that Bouteflika would not be standing for a fourth term of office due to ill-health. Benflis is reported to have phoned Al-Khabar with a denial the same day, but the former FLN Secretary General is nonetheless clearly a man to watch over the coming months.
As it happens, same issue of Al-Khabar carried, on the page opposite the article on Ali Benflis’ alleged presidential bid, a full-page advertisement paid for by millionaire member of parliament for Annaba Bahaeddine Tliba[3], beseeching President Bouteflika to run for a fourth term of office in 2014. While it is conceivable that this is no more than a personal initiative of Tliba’s, it is worth remembering that pseudo-spontaneous appeals for an ostensibly reluctant head of state to reconsider h
is supposed plans for retirement have long been a set-piece of pre-electoral periods in autocratic republics across the Arab world. And while Bouteflika did seem to be signalling his readiness to bow out when he gave his now famous “tab djenanena”[4] speech in Setif in May of this year, there has been mounting speculation that he may not be ready to give up the presidency yet after all. Indeed, the same ex-DRS source cited above suggests that until recently, Bouteflika was in two minds about running again in 2014, though his family had been urging him to do so, but may now be inclined to stay on for a fourth term of office because of developments in Mali and the South: in the turmoil that is afflicting the region and threatening Algeria itself, Bouteflika would, it is argued, be a symbol of the stability and continuity of the Algerian state.
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