Protesters’ Message to Algeria’s President: You Can’t Fool Us

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/world/africa/algeria-bouteflika-election.html

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Initial euphoria over the Algerian president’s decision to give up his candidacy for a fifth term quickly gave way on Tuesday to skepticism and anger among opposition figures who called the move a “trick” to save his troubled government.

Hundreds of youthful protesters returned to the streets of Algiers and other cities a day after the government canceled the April election, and the country’s independent news media gave voice to a sense that the elderly and infirm president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was maneuvering to extend his mandate under the guise of “reform.”

Independent television in Algeria broadcast images of demonstrators holding signs with messages like “No extension, game over” and “System, give it up,” using one of the names Algerians commonly give to the ruling circle.

The way forward in this giant, oil-rich North African country, four times the size of its former colonizer, France, is unclear. What is nearly certain, though, is that the anti-government demonstrations that have repeatedly hit cities and towns from the coastal north to the desert south will continue.

The question looming over the disarray is how long the government will be able to maintain its grip, or whether the all-powerful army, up to now restrained, will intervene to preserve the status quo, as it has done in the past.

At the same time, no single leader has emerged to unite the country’s chronically divided opposition, weakened by years of repression and oil-money patronage dispensed by Mr. Bouteflika, who has been president for two decades.

On Monday night, Algeria’s government announced, in the name of the paralyzed, 82-year-old Mr. Bouteflika, that an April 18 election would not be held, that he would not be a candidate in any future election, and that a constitutional convention would be held to promote “reforms.”

But no timetable was given for the national convention, or for any future election. Mr. Bouteflika’s growing body of opponents suggested that the president — or the ruling army-led circle behind him — was merely seeking to prolong his term in office.

While Mr. Bouteflika got rid of his broadly unpopular prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, for years a loyal servant, the reaction a day later to the president’s moves was broadly hostile.

“He’s canceled the election and remains in power: Bouteflika’s latest trick,” read a headline on Tuesday in the leading independent daily newspaper, El Watan.

The veteran opposition leader Saïd Saadi, who has been imprisoned several times by the government, said in a telephone interview from Algiers: “People were demanding an election without Bouteflika. Now he’s saying it’s going to be Bouteflika without an election.”

State television broadcast rare images of an immobile Mr. Bouteflika hunched over in a chair, his face frozen, receiving visitors. Some of his visitors have confirmed that Mr. Bouteflika has extreme difficulty speaking.

It is unclear how much of the turmoil he is aware of. The televised images did not appear to reassure the public.

“I don’t think this will calm the country at all,” Mr. Saadi said. “Even more will be out on the streets Friday,” he added, referring to the weekly protests that have been held after Friday Prayer.

Ali Benflis, a leading opposition figure and one of Mr. Bouteflika’s former prime ministers, told France 24 television that the government’s plan was “simply a trick, another trick.”

Mr. Benflis added: “This is an extension decided on by unconstitutional forces. This is an illegitimate presidency. This just makes the situation worse. It’s a charade.” Mr. Benflis had been a candidate in the scheduled April 18 election but withdrew to protest Mr. Bouteflika’s presence in it.

Mr. Bouteflika’s latest plan “will only reinforce the determination to take to the streets and ask the regime to leave,” Amel Boubekeur, a researcher at EHESS in Paris, said in a telephone interview from Algiers.

“It’s not even constitutionally based,” she said. “It’s not the responsibility of the president to determine elections.” In any case, “the discussion is no longer about individuals,” Ms. Boubekeur said. “It is about the illegitimacy of the regime.”

In that sense, promises to include the opposition in the planned constitutional conference may fall on deaf ears, given that it will be organized by Mr. Bouteflika’s discredited government.

The newly appointed deputy prime minister, Ramtane Lamamra, a former foreign minister, made such promises in an interview Tuesday with Radio France Internationale. “An opening-up is the order of the day,” Mr. Lamamra said. “It’s a true national consensus, the union of all Algerians and their energies in the service of a qualitatively better future.”

Algerians have heard this before. It is not clear that anybody is listening this time.