Issue No. 608
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17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Fear and apathy in Algeria
Ethnic violence and apathy mar the move toward secular government in Algeria's recent local elections, reports Rasha Saad
Algeria's ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) won a convincing victory in Friday's elections. The local elections held on 12 October come after the FLN convincingly won a majority of seats in last May's general parliamentary elections.
Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni said President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika's FLN won control of 668 communes (districts) out of a total of 1,541 and won political control of 43 of Algeria's 48 largest cities. The government aligned National Democratic Rally (RND) lost its previously held majority. The RND claimed victory in only 171 communes. Independent candidates came in ahead of the primary secularist opposition party, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), which won 65 communes to the independents' 77. Islamist parties saw a decline in support, with the exception of one, Abdullah Djaballah's National Reform Movement, which gained control of 39 town councils.
Reports pointed to Algerian Prime Minister Ali Benflis's role in developing the FLN image as a reason for the party's newfound popularity. Before Benflis took over the FLN spent around a decade on the edges of Algerian politics. The party's record and reputation had been tainted by its role in the bloody riots of October 1988. Approximately 400 people died in those riots. The 1988 riots marked the beginning of political change in Algeria and the loss of the FLN's traditional grip on power. The FLN's weakness then opened the way for multi-party democracy in Algeria. However, multi-party democracy in Algeria has, until very recently, been marred by violence and instability.
The Algerian press saluted the FLN's and Benflis latest victory. Even Le Matin, an anti- government daily, said Benflis had run a brilliant campaign leading up to the local elections by focussing on "the large projects the FLN intends to get under way to give new hope to Algeria's youth."
Young people in Algeria have been hard hit by rampant unemployment. Over the past ten years the per capita income has fallen from 3,000 dollars per year to 1,500 dollars. And unemployment has skyrocketed to just over 30 per cent.
Political analysts and opposition parties agree that Benflis's efforts to focus the campaign on what the FLN could do in the future for economic issues gave the electorate a feeling of hope. As a result, many of the extremist parties saw a great loss of support.
Thursday's elections brought to memory the 1992 elections when authorities cancelled parliamentary elections which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win. Violence erupted and since then has caused the death of about 100,000 people. This most recent election witnessed a marked improvement in sectarian relations in Algeria. But not all is peaceful. The Kabylie province saw 18 months of violence and smoldering unrest.
The violence in this region has been based around one of Algeria's more long-standing ethnic conflicts. Berbers claim to be the original inhabitants of modern day Algeria. Moreover, the Berbers in modern-day Algeria claims to be excluded from the political process and to be suffering from institutional discrimination by the now majority Arab population.
The Berber conflict with central authorities intensified in April 2001, when a high school student was shot to death in custody of the gendarmes (the force that keeps security in the countryside). Since then the Kabylie region, east of the capital, has been engaged in an open revolt against Algiers and over 100 people have lost their life in the violence.
Originally the FFS was organizing a boycott of the local level elections. Eventually, the party which draws most of its grassroots level support from Kabylie decided to participate in the elections. However many still adhered to the boycott and small scale rioting in some areas kept some polls closed. Voter turnout in the region was an abysmal 12 per cent. More than 300 police were injured, while boycotters threw Molotov cocktails, sacked voting booths and blocked roads. Some voters who defied the boycott were pelted with stones.
In addition to the calls to boycott from the Islamists the Arouchs (traditional Berber councils) also called for a boycott of the elections. This added to the country-wide low voter participation in the elections -- approximately 50 per cent of eligible voters participated in the elections. In addition, many political analysts believe that the electorate has been jaded by the past decade of violence and believe that elections are not able to spark real political change.
Mourad Dhina, an exiled leader of the FIS, criticised the polls as "cosmetic window-dressing to make a dictatorship appear to be a democracy". Dhina stated that "The elections which have taken place are part of a process which has only one goal, legitimising the government in power."
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