Tag Archives: FLN

Saïd Bouteflika winning internal battle to succeed ailing brother in Algeria

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Saïd Bouteflika, the brother of Algeria’s ailing president, might emerge as the most powerful successor to lead the country if his brother resigns or dies.

When he was reelected to a dodgy fourth term in April 2014, Algerian voters knew that Abdelaziz Bouteflika, now aged 79, was ailing.Algeria_Flag_Icon

Though he easily dispatched a former prime minister, Ali Benflis, who officially won just over 12% of the vote, most of the opposition simply boycotted the last vote. During the 2011 Arab spring protests and beyond, Algerians have generally been more willing to tolerate Bouteflika’s hold on power because of the stability that his regime brought after a decade of civil war.

Aides claim the president’s faculties are intact, despite a stroke three years ago that left him unable to speak. Nevertheless, it’s clear — and has been clear for some time — that there’s an internal struggle between Bouteflika’s camp and the Algerian military about his ultimate successor.

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RELATED: Bouteflika headed for controversial fourth term

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Last year, Bouteflika sidelined Algeria’s top internal security official, Mohamed Mediene, a move widely seen as a setback to the military’s involvement in Algerian domestic politics and, accordingly, any succession after Bouteflika’s resignation or death. It was a shock at the time, considering that Mediene, also known as ‘Toufik’ and commonly referred to as the Dieu de l’Algérie, or the ‘God of Algeria,’ had been a fixture within the country’s power elite for more than two decades as the head of the Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS), the Algerian intelligence agency since 1990.

'General Touflik' had been at the heart of Algeria's military and intelligence services for a quarter-century until his abrupt removal last year. (Al Jazeera)
‘General Touflik’ had been at the heart of Algeria’s military and intelligence services for a quarter-century until his abrupt removal last year. (Al Jazeera)

Bouteflika’s next step came earlier this week, with his administration apparently set to reorganize the DRS altogether. If successful, Bouteflika will have dismantled one of the institutional pillars of the military’s power, thereby transferring the country’s intelligence apparatus, which plays a role in domestic as well as international affairs, from the military to the presidential camp.

With so much at stake, the Algerian military may not simply accept such a sweeping adjustment of power, and its leaders may be biding their time to strike in a post-Bouteflika struggle. But it means that Bouteflika’s camp is very serious about controlling the post-Bouteflika transition in as orderly way as possible — and in a way that leaves the presidential regime, and not military or DRS leaders, in charge.

His brother’s keeper

The most likely successor? For now, it might be Saïd Bouteflika, who will argue that he represents the most seamless transition, thereby guaranteeing Algeria’s continued stability.

So what do we know about Saïd? Continue reading Saïd Bouteflika winning internal battle to succeed ailing brother in Algeria

Algeria election results: Bouteflika wins handily

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To confirm what was obvious to anyone before the election, Algeria’s long-serving president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, at age 77, has won a fourth term.Algeria_Flag_Icon

Though he won 81.53% of the vote, that marks a drop from the 90.2% he won in 2009 and the 85.0% he won in 2004. What’s more, turnout dropped to 11.3 million (just 51.7%) from 15.35 million in 2009 (74.5%), demonstrating just how apathetic Algerian voters have become about the election.

The runner-up, Ali Benflis, served as Bouteflika’s prime minister from 2000 to 2003 and was once a top official in the ruling Front de Libération Nationale (FLN, National Liberation Front, جبهة التحرير الوطني), but he broke with Bouteflika to run in the 2004 election. While he officially won 12.18% of the vote in the April 17 election, he denounced the vote as subject to widespread fraud.

Bouteflika headed for controversial fourth term

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Though Algeria quickly became one of the first countries where the ‘Arab Spring’ protests gained momentum three years ago, its longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika is almost certain to win a fourth term in Thursday’s presidential election. Algeria_Flag_Icon

Algerians, like many others throughout north Africa and the Middle East, coalesced in protest of higher prices, massive unemployment and the general lack of economic progress. But with memories of Algeria’s brutal, decade-long civil war of the 1990s still fresh, it was enough for Bouteflika (pictured above) to agree to end the 19-year period of ’emergency rule,’ lift some of his government’s more oppressive measures against political expression and introduce subsidies to lower the price of food and other necessities.

Besides, most Algerians thought, he would be too old at age 77 to run for a fourth term. Nonetheless, despite a campaign to convince Algerian voters to boycott tomorrow’s vote, Bouteflika will theoretically extend his rule through 2019.

But Bouteflika’s reelection campaign says less about Bouteflika than it does about the power struggle bubbling beneath the surface. Frail and unable to walk, Bouteflika suffered a stroke last year and spent four months receiving medical treatment in Paris. No one thinks he’ll last another five years. At a recent meeting with US secretary of state John Kerry, he could barely stand up or and he seemed unable to speak clearly.

So why not groom a successor and let Bouteflika slip into a comfortable retirement? Continue reading Bouteflika headed for controversial fourth term

Egypt 2013 is not Algeria 1991 (whew!), but that’s bad news for Egyptian democracy

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Among the groups that wield real power in Egypt, democracy turns out to be not so incredibly popular.Algeria_Flag_Iconegypt_flag_new

No matter what U.S. secretary of state John Kerry says and no matter what Egypt’s army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi (pictured above) believes, the military effort to push Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, from office was hardly a lesson in preserving democracy.  Militaries in healthy democracies, Middle Eastern or otherwise, do not respond to public protests by ousting elected governments.

But Morsi, by pushing through a new constitution without ample debate last December and attempting to assume near-dictatorial powers in order to do so, and more recently trying to stack the ranks of Egypt’s regional governments with rank-and-file Muslim Brotherhood members, showed that he also lacked enthusiasm for civic participation.

What’s happening in Egypt today is starting to resemble a revolutionary moment less and less.  Instead, it looks more like the same cat-and-mouse game that the powerful Egyptian military (and the ever-lurking, so-called ‘deep state’), with ties to the United States and a knack for secular realpolitik, has been playing with the today-confrontational, tomorrow-conciliatory Muslim Brotherhood for decades.

In short, Egypt 2013 looks a lot like Egypt 2003. Or 1993. Or even 1973.  The Muslim Brotherhood and the countervailing political-military structure have been repeating the same game year after year, decade after decade.

That’s good news for those who are worrying that Egypt looks a lot like Algeria 1991 instead.

The Egypt-Algeria analogy looms ominously today, so it’s worth considering the similarities in some detail.  After nearly three decades of rule by the National Liberation Front (FLN, جبهة التحرير الوطني), the guerrilla-group-turned-ruling-party that once liberated Algeria from the French during the bloody war of independence in the 1950s and the early 1960s, Algerians had grown unruly over their country’s progress.  On the back of popular protests against Algeria’s government in 1989 over poor economic conditions, officials instituted local elections in 1990.  The surprise winner of those elections was the Islamic Salvation Front, a hastily constructed coalition of disparate Islamic elements.

When the Algerian government held national elections in December 1991 to elect a new parliament, the Islamic Salvation Front performed even better, winning 188 out of 231 seats in the first round of the election.  The Algerian military promptly canceled the second round of the elections and retroactively canceled the first round, to the relief of the ruling elite that comprised the Algerian pouvoir.  The decision also relieved diplomats in Paris and, especially, Washington, where policymakers on the cusp of winning the Cold War did not envision that the new pax Americana should involve landslide victories throughout the Muslim world for Islamic fundamentalists who had no real passion for democracy.  As Edward Djerejian scoffed at the time, a victory for the Islamists might amount to ‘one man, one vote, one time.’

The military quickly ousted Algeria’s 13-year ruler Chadli Bendjedid for good measure, then banned the Islamic Salvation Front and instituted military rule.

Sound familiar?

The comparison is particularly worrisome because Algeria’s Islamists fought back with full force and the country descended into a bloody civil war.  Although the military subdued what had become an Islamist guerrilla force by the end of the 1990s, strongman Abdelaziz Bouteflika took power in 1999, he remains in power (if not in great health) today, and Algeria has been a semi-authoritarian state ever since.  So much for Algeria’s short-lived foray into democracy.

But if there is reason to believe that Egypt is merely falling back into long-established familiar patterns between the military and the Islamists, which have tussled for years without escalating their differences into a full-fledged civil war, and that bodes well for Egypt’s short-term and medium-term stability.

Sure, the faces and the names have changed.  Hosni Mubarak’s sclerotic three-decade reign is firmly in the past, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi was forced into retirement, Omar Suleiman died, and Ahmed Shafiq lost the June 2012 presidential runoff to Morsi.  But a new coterie of secular and military power-brokers, like El-Sisi and newly enthroned vice president Mohamed ElBaradei have risen in their stead and maybe one day, nationalist neo-Nasserite Hamdeen Sabahi and Ambien-variety Muslim democrats like Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh.  Egypt’s priority now is to keep either side from any radical lurches.  But as long as El-Sisi doesn’t launch a wholesale slaughter of Muslim Brotherhood protesters, it seems unlikely that Egypt could unravel into the kind of civil war that plagued Algeria for a decade.

The bad news is that doesn’t bode well for Egypt’s experiment in democracy over the past two years.   Continue reading Egypt 2013 is not Algeria 1991 (whew!), but that’s bad news for Egyptian democracy

FLN wins Algerian election; Islamist ‘Green Alliance’ coalition alleges fraud after weak third-place finish

The first news of an election result from Thursday’s Algerian parliamentary elections has trickled in.

It appears that the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, or FLN) has won 220 of the 462 seats in the parliament.

The National Rally for Democracy, the party of Algeria’s current prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia, won second place with 68 seats, giving the government a comfortable majority at a time of incredible disenchantment within Algeria.

The alliance of Algeria’s top Islamist parties, the so-called ‘Green Alliance’, won third place with just 48 seats, fewer seats than the parties previously held in the prior parliament, even though the number of seats in Algeria’s parliament has been expanded by 73 seats.

The Socialist Forces Front appears to have won 21 seats (it currently had no representation) and Louisa Hanoune’s Worker’s Party has won 20 seats (down from 26 in the previous assembly) — both are leftist, secular parties.  No other party won seats in double digits.

Color me skeptical, but I have doubts about just how free and fair the elections were on the basis of a result that gives the government a comfortable majority — the government also claims that turnout has been just under 45%, which is significantly higher than the 2007 election and after a campaign noted for massive apathy about the efficacy of Thursday’s vote.  The Green Alliance has already alleged widespread fraud on the basis of its own observations.

The FLN has ruled Algeria since 1962, and is itself a manifestation of the resistance group that fought for independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Algeria’s bloody war against France.  It is the ossified party of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has attempted to use the parliamentary election as a showcase of limited reforms that he has claimed have led to a more open Algeria in the face of ‘Arab spring’ protests in the Middle East, protests that have forced three longtime dictators out of power in North Africa since January 2011.  Continue reading FLN wins Algerian election; Islamist ‘Green Alliance’ coalition alleges fraud after weak third-place finish

Algerian government announces higher turnout, election results expected Friday

Algerians went to the polls Thursday for what have been billed as the first free and fair parliamentary elections in over 20 years.

No results are expected until Friday, but the Algerian government has announced a higher-than-expected turnout — at 42.9% turnout, it is higher than the 35% turnout recorded in the 2007 election.  Algeria’s government, under longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was looking for a robust turnout to mark support for the limited reforms it has introduced since the ‘Arab Spring’ revolts swept the Middle East since January 2011.

Notwithstanding the government’s efforts, the fairly limited powers of Algeria’s parliament and widespread skepticism among Algeria’s relatively youthful electorate have resulted in widespread apathy about Thursday’s election.

The two main groups vying for power are the longtime governing party, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale, or FLN), and various Islamic parties, many of which are competing under a joint ‘Green alliance’ banner.

Foreign observers reported “general satisfactory” conditions:

The head of the European Union observation mission, Jose Ignacio Salafranca, told reporters that polling was conducted in “generally satisfactory” conditions.

Foreign observers totalled 500 to cover a country four times the size of France — Algeria is Africa’s largest nation — and they were denied access to the national voters roll.

The Algerian electoral commission said it had received dozens of complaints, including some concerning two ministers who are accused of campaigning around polling stations and now face legal proceedings.

Algerian election: a battle for turnout

Shortly after Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime fell in Tunisia in January 2011, amplifying the ‘Arab Spring’ revolts to a global scream, the next logical candidate for uprising was not Egypt or Libya or Yemen or Syria or Bahrain.

It was neighboring Algeria.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika had been in office as Algeria’s president since 1999 — and for much of that time, the country had been subject to ’emergency rule’ following a bloody civil war in Algeria that began after the Islamic Salvation Front won Algeria’s first free parliamentary election in 1991 and a military coup annulling the election result.  Just as in neighboring Tunisia, young Algerians were protesting against unemployment and rising food costs, and also as in Tunisia, a wave of self-immolations in protest of the government met with escalating crowds and outrage against Bouteflika.  Algeria was about as great a candidate for grassroots-led regime change as any other country in the Middle East and Maghreb.

Yet Bouteflika remains in power and was never seriously in danger of losing it.  Some commentators suggested that Algerians were wary of toppling a government and risking yet another civil war after the carnage of the 1990s.  In addition, Bouteflika deployed a cannier mix of carrots and sticks (police came out in force to contain the protests, especially after Hosni Mubarak’s regime fell in Egypt) than either Ben Ali or Mubarak in his own attempts to hold onto power in 2011.  Most notably, Bouteflika agreed to end Algeria’s 19-year ’emergency rule’, raised salaries for Algerian workers and took steps to lower the price of food in Algeria.

Bouteflika also permitted the existence of new political parties, many of which will contest Algeria’s May 10 parliamentary election, which is expected to be Algeria’s first free election since the fateful 1991 elections that sparked Algeria’s civil war.  Bouteflika has also expanded the number of members of parliament by 73 seats for a total of 462, all of which will be up for grabs on Thursday.  While the parliament’s powers are slim compared to those of the president, it does appear that Bouteflika is making good on his promise of opening Algeria to more democracy.

This time around, though, the threat is whether enough of Algeria’s over 20 million voters will actually turn out to participate (note that over 70% of the country’s 35 million population are younger than 30 years old).  The joke from Algeria’s leading political cartoonist Dilem yesterday was that Algerians were passionate about the election — the one to Algeria’s north between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. Continue reading Algerian election: a battle for turnout