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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 29, 2019 20:40:20 GMT
It has been 9 years since the 'Arab spring' in Tunisia which ejected Ben Ali from power. And there were also the movements that threw out the leaders of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya... those didn't always end in a happy conclusion. Tunisia isn't doing too badly. It is a democracy now, and there is extreme vigilance locally for it to remain so. Neighbouring Algeria was not as lucky, but there was a reason for that. In 1991 there were relatively democratic elections with an 'incorrect' outcome -- the hard line Islamic parties came out on top, and that was unacceptable to the regime in power.
So a sort of civil war began, and 150,000 people died over the following years. In 1999 Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president. He passed an amnesty law for all of the killers, and peace was restored to the country. And so he has been president for the last 20 years (4 terms) even though he had a stroke in 2013 and has been almost completely incapacitated since then. He had efficient puppeteers, though, so the country continued to operate more or less. This year, though, even though it is clear that he is practically a vegetable now, it was announced that he would run for a 5th term.
Finally, this was too much. Half of the population has only ever known him as president, an even though most people appreciate that he brought peace to the country in 1999, there has been little or no progress in people's lives since then, and they want something new. The country is rife with corruption and all of the money from its rich oil reserves is disappearing into the pockets of corrupt politicians. And for a country with a population of 45 million people, it is not at all normal that the industrial and commercial base is so pathetic.
And so the Algerian spring appears to have finally begun. Starting with the students and then joined by a lot of the rest of the population, there have been huge demonstrations (peaceful!) for the last six weeks, and there have been some results. The 5th candidacy of Bouteflika was withdrawn and he promised to resign after a constitutional convention. But this delays his departure for almost a year, and the idea is rejected by the demonstrators. It doesn't look like they are going to back down.
This is really an issue to follow by anybody who favours an increase of democracy in the world.
Here is a video by the democracy movement.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2019 16:28:15 GMT
This is really an issue to follow by anybody who favours an increase of democracy in the world. Indeed! Of course it is in the news, but not at all to the degree that one would expect. Possibly it's more to the forefront in France because of its history with Algeria, but it's not making front page headlines on major English-language newspapers the way Venezuela is, for instance.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2019 16:40:42 GMT
France obviously has a front row seat when you consider the fact that there are 815,000 registered Algerian voters living in France -- of course quite a few of them are Franco-Algerians because the last French statistics indicated "only" 476,000 registered Algerian aliens in France. As for people of Algerian origin in France, estimates range from 2 million to 5 million -- most of that depends on how you want to count the children of mixed couples.
I fully understand that most of the world is not at all interested -- we can't be interested about everything everywhere -- but I hope that there will be a bit more media coverage as the situation develops, since in recent years revolutions that go right seem to have been far less common than revolutions that go wrong. (Speaking of which, the Ukrainian presidential elections are also happening right now -- another new fragile democracy.)
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2019 17:40:26 GMT
I fully understand that most of the world is not at all interested -- we can't be interested about everything everywhere -- but I hope that there will be a bit more media coverage as the situation develops ... Well, we need to be interested in everything to the degree that it is possible, especially those of us who have enjoyed living in countries with relative freedom and prosperity most of our lives. The movement in Tunisia was exciting and eye-opening to the rest of the world, as this one should be as well. Print news is certainly not free of this, but television news seems to me to be far more superficial and filled with an excess of commentary in relationship to hard, unbiased news presentation.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 1, 2019 18:36:58 GMT
Although an Algerian newspaper had reported that Bouteflika would resign tomorrow, it has now been officially announce that he will leave power before 28 April, which is the end of his term. Unfortunately, the puppetmasters have not yet decided what to do next.
I imagine that the Friday demonstrations will continue with as many or more people than ever. (Algeria changed its weekend a few years ago from Saturday-Sunday to Friday-Saturday to be more Islamic.)
This photo is from when he was just a semi-zombie rather than a full zombie.
www.elwatan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Bouteflika-2.jpg
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Post by questa on Apr 2, 2019 6:28:48 GMT
Oh ! it seems I am not allowed to see this picture. When UK granted full independence to its colonies it was a calm political handover with some dissent but little violence. When France clung to its colonies and would not agree to independence it was a bloodbath that went on for years. I hope those in the powerful positions in politics, military and religions manage to keep cool heads. I will be following the developments closely...my interest increased as while in Morocco I rode a camel to an Algerian check point in the Sahara, asking questions of the Toureg guides.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Apr 2, 2019 6:39:46 GMT
As I've been avoiding the news (for obvious reasons) I was unaware of the Algerian demonstration. I do hope it works out. I doubt that there would be much on the news here anyway...if it isn't Brexit, sport, Trump or royalty they probably wont cover it. I'll follow this story with interest
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 2, 2019 10:37:15 GMT
Oh ! it seems I am not allowed to see this picture. When UK granted full independence to its colonies it was a calm political handover with some dissent but little violence. When France clung to its colonies and would not agree to independence it was a bloodbath that went on for years. I hope those in the powerful positions in politics, military and religions manage to keep cool heads. I will be following the developments closely...my interest increased as while in Morocco I rode a camel to an Algerian check point in the Sahara, asking questions of the Toureg guides. The picture is gone for me, too. That happens sometimes.
Actually decolonisation went very well for France almost everywhere. The only colony that cut relations with France for a number of years was Guinea. Just about all of the other former French colonies in Africa use the common currency of the CFA franc, which France still guarantees with a fixed rate to the euro. As for Algeria, it was not considered a colony, which is what caused the problem. It had a significant percentage of ethnic French, voted in French elections, had full representation in parliament and the senate. It was much more French than Tunisia and Morocco, which were just protectorates, so it was easy to let them go after WW2. Vietnam was another problem since after having been enslaved by the Japanese, the people did not want France to come back as though nothing had happened.
As for Algeria, it all started in 1956 when France gave full independence to Tunisia and Morocco. The Algerians thought "hey wait a minute! Why not us?" It is absolutely true that the great majority of ethnic Algerians did not have the same rights as the ethnic French before 1946, and even then the local Muslim authorities refused women the right to vote. France hated the idea, but it was forced to take into consideration the fact that it had not succeeded in installing French values in the Muslim population, and in the parliamentary Algerian representation, there were 46 out of 67 Muslim representatives from Algeria in the French National Assembly and 22 senators out of 31.
The first agitation by the National Liberation Front had begun in 1954, and by 1958 it pretty much resembled a war. By the time political leaders in France decided that Algeria wasn't worth the trouble (and public opinion in France pretty much thought the same thing) and signed an independence treaty in 1962, more than 140,000 NLF soldiers were killed (including 12,000 by infighting among the factions) and 25,600 French soldiers. To this you have to add 30,000 Harkis (Muslim soldiers supporting France) who were killed or disappeared (I imagine that a number of them became anonymous citizens of the new Algeria). And of course more than one million ethnic French and quite a few Harkis had to repatriate to France, a cold country that didn't know what to do with them...
Anyway, back to the current situation. The first president of note (after a couple ephemeral presidents) was Houari Boumedienne from 1965 to his death in 1978. And his right hand man was a little guy with bright blue eyes called Abdelaziz Bouteflika. He became minister of Foreign Affairs at age 26, the youngest minister of Foreign Affairs in the world. He organised a visit by Che Guevara to Algeria and travelled the world. He also had an extraordinary sex drive and among his conquests was Jean Seberg. In fact, he made dozens of incognito visits to Paris, staying in a suite in one of the finest hotels, with a non stop stream of women visitors.
In 1974, it was Bouteflika who brought Yasser Arafat to the UN General Assembly and also Bouteflika who got the UN to expel racist South Africa from most of its institutions. Bouteflika also led the negotiations with the terrorist Carlos when the OPEC oil ministers were taken hostage in Vienna in 1975 and flown to Algiers.
So Bouteflika was really somebody back in those days... and then he fell into disgrace the moment Boumedienne died. He knew Algerian politics well enough to get the hell out of the country as fast as possible, so he stayed in France and Switzerland for the next ten years. The army begged him to become president for the next 5 years, but he preferred to play hard to get until 1994 when the period of Islamic terrorism was becoming really nasty after the military fucked up the elections because the wrong people won (the Muslim fundamentalists instead of the NLF). And he has been in power since then, in spite of multiple strokes and pretty much being a vegetable in a wheelchair. He appears to still have his mind, but nobody can understand a word he says except his handlers, who probably deform whatever he said.
Anyway, he didn't seem to be a really bad president before becoming an invalid. He was the usual authoritarian dictator with rigged elections just like in so many other countries, but he did try to improve Algeria. He is totally annoyed by the laziness of the Algerians, who don't do crap. He pointed out in numerous speeches that the economy and the agriculture of both Tunisia and Morocco have far surpassed Algeria, which has a greater population and is also an oil producer.
So after 20 years, he is finally going, and more than half the population has only ever known him as the leader of the country.
The young people want something different, even if they're not sure quite what. One of the most promising developments is that many of them who were planning to leave Algeria as soon as possible now see a ray of hope and want to stay. If only the same thing could happen to some of the other countries of exile...
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 2, 2019 10:49:27 GMT
I thought that this was a really interesting quote from a speech by Bouteflika (when he was still able to harangue a crowd):
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Post by questa on Apr 2, 2019 13:05:37 GMT
Many thanks, K2 for that concise history. I was a mere teenager at the time and there was much I did not understand. Oddly enough, the first foreign news story I ever followed was the fall at Dien Bien Phu in 1954...I was 12. Naturally again, there was little I knew about the situation but by the time the Americans got involved I knew a bit of the background and the reasons for the involvement at Khe San etc,
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 2, 2019 13:27:59 GMT
I just learned a lot of this stuff, too. There was a huge article in my paper today (6 pages) because they apparently lost patience for the obituary -- I guess they'll have to reprint most of it when he dies.
You must have wondered what on earth Australia was doing in South Vietnam, too. I never imagined that more than 60,000 Australian troops served there. I guess those damned communists were threatening to invade you!
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Post by whatagain on Apr 2, 2019 19:06:45 GMT
I like reading le jeune Afrique. It is a little bit too leftist but focused on Africa with some insight in western world from another perspective.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 2, 2019 20:41:15 GMT
Ah, Bouteflika has resigned tonight... or been pushed out. Too soon to tell.
The population is very nervous, it seems. Who wouldn't be?
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Post by questa on Apr 2, 2019 23:40:17 GMT
Not a whisper about Algeria here. Who would have done the "pushing"?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2019 4:04:06 GMT
Just like in Egypt and Thailand, the military calls all the shots in Algeria.
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Post by questa on Apr 3, 2019 11:15:20 GMT
Literally as well as figuratively
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2019 18:16:48 GMT
The Algerian constitution requires that the presidential election be held within 90 days, but the interim president Abdelkader Bensalah is considered to be totally despicable, so I doubt that the weekly demonstrations will stop. In the past, the government has always ensured that any "dangerous" candidates were disqualified, and this ensured that Bouteflika won with percentages above 80%. It looks like the population will not put up with that anymore.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 3, 2019 19:09:05 GMT
Are the FIS still a factor?
I get the idea that Algeria is more tolerant of street demonstrations than Egypt or Thailand, letting the people let off steam then business as usual for the military and ruling clique.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2019 19:20:32 GMT
I don't know to what extent the FIS is still around, but obviously there are conservative Islamic parties in Algeria. Nevertheless, in the videos of the demonstrations, there have not been very many veils, quite the contrary. And the military in Algeria are quite similar to the military in Egypt -- total opposition to Islamic factions.
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Post by whatagain on Apr 4, 2019 16:26:58 GMT
The FIS would be in Algeria and the rest of the family in Marseille.
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Post by questa on Apr 4, 2019 23:52:09 GMT
I am not familiar with "FIS" Who are they, please?
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 5, 2019 3:49:28 GMT
Front Islamique du Salut - Islamic Salvation Front
It's when they won the legislative elections in 1991 and the army decided "no way!" and cancelled the results that the 10 years of terror began. At least 60,000 people died.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 8, 2019 22:08:56 GMT
Including the entire immediate family of a friend who was a refugee here. Now he is doing fairly well; he managed to get his teaching equivalency and is teaching, but of course it weighs heavily on him. There have been several demonstrations of Algerians and friends here in Montréal.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2019 18:21:15 GMT
Today the police in Algeria used tear gas and water cannons against the demonstrators for the first time. The demonstrators don't want Abdelkader Bensalah to be in power for the next 90 days, although that is the rule of the constitution. Therefore, I can't give an opinion about this -- I don't know how bad Abdelkader Bensalah really is (he is part of the Bouteflika clique, though) and if it is really awful if he is in charge of the country until the election.
Meanwhile, Algeria seems to have inspired Sudan, which is having monster demonstrations against the regime. However, unlike Algeria, people have already died.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 9, 2019 18:46:26 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 5, 2019 13:23:33 GMT
Today is the 57th anniversary of Algerian independence and the 20th consecutive Friday of mass protests in Algiers, with no end in sight.
The presidential election that was supposed to be held this week was postponed indefinitely. The transitional prime minister has resigned, the army is on a hair trigger, and there is no president since Bouteflika resigned except for an interim puppet. It's still a mess, but the population is still calling the shots.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 5, 2019 18:22:50 GMT
As it should be!
To be honest, I have not been following this very much lately. Was the election postponed because of fear of more protests, or because of wrangling about candidates?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 5, 2019 18:43:03 GMT
Only two candidates filed and they were disqualified.
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Post by bjd on Jul 5, 2019 19:13:10 GMT
I think the problem in Algeria is similar to that in Sudan -- after so many years of military rule even if there was a civilian figurehead, there are so few able civilian leaders who are not tainted by association with the past regimes. Calling elections so shortly after the fall of a long-lasting ruler gives no time for anyone valid to prepare.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 5, 2019 20:09:03 GMT
Thanks, Kerouac. Excellent point, Bjd. Of course that's also the excuse countries give for not granting independence to their colonies, "They're not yet fit to rule."
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