Area: Mediterranean & Arab World - ARI Nº 87/2004 (Translation from Spanish) 6/2/2004 Algeria after the re-election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika Miguel Hernando de Larramendi∗ Subject: On April 8, 2004, Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected president of Algeria in the first round, with 84.9% of votes cast. Summary: Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected president of the Republic of Algeria in the first round of presidential elections held on April 8, 2004. Repeated declarations of neutrality by the armed forces, as well as the willingness expressed by the Chief of the General Staff, Mohamed Lamari, to accept the victory of any candidate –including the leader of the Islah Islamist party, Abdallah Jabala– led international observers to take greater interest in these elections. On this occasion, unlike during the presidential elections of 1999, the other candidates did not withdraw, which helped make the elections appear relatively open and competitive. The weight of the armed forces in Algerian politics remains a decisive factor in any analysis of Algerian political and economic life. Bouteflika’s victory strengthens his position in the political system, though the unexpected magnitude of his win undermines the credibility of elections that were meant to give the world the impression that a democratizing process is underway after more than a decade of civil war –with the post-9/11 international context of the war against terrorism as a backdrop–. Analysis: Abdelaziz Bouteflika, minister of Foreign Affairs from 1963 to 1978 and a key player in establishing Algeria’s international prestige in the 1970s, had not taken part in Algerian domestic politics since the armed forces distanced him from the succession of Huari Bumedián in 1978, forcing him into exile. In the early 1990s, Bouteflika kept away from public life and in 1994 even refused the army’s offer for him to pilot the political institutionalization process after the coup in 1992. As General Jaled Nezzar comments in his memoirs, Bouteflika was able to become President of the Republic in 1999 thanks to strong support from part of the military hierarchy which, after forcing the resignation of General Liamin Zerual, decided to withdraw the army from the forefront of the political scene and bring Bouteflika back. Their goal was to improve the regime’s image abroad and to reduce the risk of an internationalization of the Algerian civil conflict, which had worsened in the months before as several missions of international observers and a UN delegation arrived to gather on-site information on the causes of the violence that was shaking the country. Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s position as the new President of the Republic was weakened by the fact that the other candidates boycotted the electoral process, which they considered fraudulent. His main goal since then has been to enhance his own legitimacy to strengthen his position in the system and enable him to increase the presidentialist bent of the 1996 Constitution, increasing his independence from the decision-makers in the military and from the political parties that supported them. In parliament, Bouteflika built a heterogeneous presidential majority made up of two parties ∗ Miguel Hernando de Larramendi Professor at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha and researcher at the Taller de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos (TEIM) 1 Area: Mediterranean & Arab World - ARI Nº 87/2004 (Translation from Spanish) Date 6/2/2004 close to the government –the FLN and the RND–, a tame Islamist party –the MSP– and a Berber party –the RCD–, which favoured separating church from state and distancing Islamism from public life. The latter party abandoned the government coalition after the Berber revolt broke out in Cabilia in April 2001. During his first mandate, the quest for independence was one of the cornerstones of President Bouteflika’s very personal presidential style, leading him to break taboos such as the public use of the French language, celebrating the new millennium according to the Gregorian calendar, promoting Saint Augustine’s Algerian origins and the role played by the Jewish community in preserving Algeria’s cultural heritage. After a decade of rhetoric focused on eradicating Islamism, Bouteflika made national reconciliation the leit motif of his electoral programme in the 1999 elections, enabling him to connect with the hopes of broad sectors of the Algerian population to re-establish peace and security in the country after a long civil war that had caused more than 100,000 deaths. In this context, the law on ‘National Harmony’ was passed by 96.3% of the votes after a plebiscite held in September 1999 which posed the following question: ‘Are you in favour or against the initiative of the President of the Republic aimed at achieving peace and civil harmony?’. This question directly linked the figure of the president with peace and reconciliation. His decision to combine repression with an olive branch led 6,000 AIS fighters (the armed branch of the FIS) to lay down their arms and helped bring about a considerable improvement in the state of security in Algeria in recent years, especially in urban areas. These results were one of Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s main political assets going into the presidential elections in 2004. According to independent estimates, there were around 140 killings in the first quarter of 2004. Algeria’s return to international affairs after a decade of domestic strife and international pressure for not respecting human rights was Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s second objective and he hoped to find support abroad that would strengthen his political position at home. The emphasis on national reconciliation and civil peace enabled Bouteflika to offset the negative image the regime had acquired through its repression of Islamism, rescuing Algeria from the ‘moral embargo’ to which it was subjected after the accusations made by several NGOs regarding the involvement of the security forces in mass violations of human rights. The 35th AOU summit, held in Algiers in June 1999, and the president’s visits to the United States and France, marked the beginning of Algeria’s return to the international scene, led by Bouteflika. The 9/11 attacks in 2001 gave the regime a shot in the arm, allowing it to portray the Algerian civil war not as the result of an interruption of the electoral process in 1991, but rather as an early, large-scale conflict in the war on terrorism. The military top brass used this new context to try to clean up their image, strengthening ties with the United States in the framework of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue, which Algeria had taken part in since 1999, as well as in the struggle against international terrorism. This was the context in which an international conference on terrorism was held in Algiers in October 2002. The new international situation led to less criticism from the international community about the way the regime had handled the fight against radical Islamism. An example of this change of perception was the turnabout in Spanish diplomacy, which abandoned former misgivings regarding human rights and worked for the signing of a Friendship and Good Neighbour Treaty with Algeria, similar to those signed with Morocco and Tunisia –this against the backdrop of a bilateral crisis between Madrid and Rabat–. The process of bringing Algeria back onto the international stage has accelerated in recent years with the signing of an Association Agreement with the European Union, the Algerian president’s participation in the G-8 meeting held in Evian, the country’s new status as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, the strengthening of its relations with NATO and the start of negotiations to join the World Trade Organization. 2 Area: Mediterranean & Arab World - ARI Nº 87/2004 (Translation from Spanish) Date 6/2/2004 The return to the world stage did not, however, lead to greater capacity to attract foreign investment that would generate employment. The only results of Algeria’s opening to foreign capital have been one big privatization –that of the El-Hadjar steelworks in the east of the country– and the sale of the first mobile telephone licence to the Egyptian group Orascom. The project to open the hydrocarbons sector to foreign investment, promoted by the Bouteflika government and followed with great interest by the big international oil companies, met with firm resistance from the UGTA trade union and was rejected by the most nationalist sectors of the population and part of the armed forces, which considered the plan an unacceptable launch pad for privatizing the Sonatrach group, the real engine of the Algerian economy, which obtains 96% of its income from oil and gas exports. The price of oil and natural gas has enabled the Bouteflika governments to rebalance public accounts, reducing foreign debt after the tough Structural Adjustment Plan applied in compliance with International Monetary Fund guidelines from 1994 to 1998. This economic bonanza has not been accompanied by less social chaos: after a decade of continuous violence, a quarter of the population remains below the poverty line, the official unemployment rate stands at around 30% and the informal economy absorbs 50% of private sector employment. The Cabilia revolt has certainly been the biggest crisis that Bouteflika has had to face. Sparked in April 2001 by the death of a youth in the Beni Duala police station, it was answered by harsh repression and 120 deaths in a mountainous region which, since independence, has demanded that its Berber identity be recognized. Although the Algerian government tried to present it as based exclusively on linguistic and cultural specificities, the Cabilia revolt had social origins involving unemployment and the lack of prospects for the younger members of the population. The structure of this citizen movement was based on the ancestral community-based organization of the Cabilian tribes –the Aaruch–.