Algeria Moves Quickly to Nip Protest in the Bud

May 3, 2011

Amid the most violent protests in nearly four months on Monday, the Algerian government responded quickly with promises of political reforms, price subsidies and jobs. But experts and human rights activists say President Abd Al-Aziz Bouteflika isn’t offering enough.

Demonstrations demanding better education and more political freedom turned violent, as student protesters confronted riot police in the capital Algiers. Some 20 protesters and three policemen were injured as policemen armed with anti-riot gear blocked a march from the central post office to the presidential palace.

But officials didn’t employ a stick-only policy. The same day, cabinet authorized digging into the country's $150 billion cash reserves, increasing public spending by 25% to create new jobs, raise public sector salaries and subsidize staples such as flour, milk, cooking oil and sugar. Bouteflika said he would invite "national figures," including opposition leaders, to discuss political reforms and constitutional amendments.

Algeria has remained relatively unscathed by the upheavals of the Arab Spring. While it suffers economic malaise and repressive government, energy-rich Algeria has the cash reserves to finance people-pleasing programs and undercut the opposition. In January, officials were similarly fast in restoring quiet by announcing a sharp increase in public spending and price cuts.

But opposition leaders said that in the new Middle East, where the street has been emboldened by the toppling of long-time leaders, the palliatives may not succeed so easily.

"The problem was never with the constitution, with the text," Moustafa Bouchachi, President of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, told The Media Line. "The problem is that the men and women who run this country don’t respect the law. You can have the best constitution, but the interior minister will still violate the law."

Turmoil in Algeria would add to the world’s energy woes. Oil exports from neighboring Libya have been sharply curtained in the wake of civil war, helping to raise prices to their highest since 2008. Algeria is one of the biggest exporters of gas and oil to the European Union, with estimated oil reserves of nearly 12 billion barrels and 159 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Bouchachi said he believed there was no political will in Bouteflika's government to conduct serious political reforms, adding that institutions and people must be replaced, not simply laws.

"The people and institutions have lost all credibility and cannot continue," he said. "The only solution is a unity transitional government which will call elections in which everyone can participate."

Mathieu Routier, a program coordinator at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, who has been following Algeria's protest movement, said the government must immediately initiate dialogue with the country's opposition.

"If the government doesn’t engage in sincere dialogue with the protest movement, there’s no telling how far things may deteriorate," Routier told The Media Line. He said the demonstrations Monday were by no means limited to students, but included groups such as pensioners, doctors and firefighters.

"The limited reforms offered by the government can’t solve the deep-seeded social problems in the country," he added. "With no mediation between civil society and the government, the only way for the public to express itself is through demonstrations."

Demonstrations have been banned in Algeria since the start of the Arab uprisings in December, but students from the University of Algiers and others have nevertheless been staging periodical anti-government protests in the capital, demanding the release of political prisoners and more political freedoms. Their demands are also pedagogical, calling for the dismissal of the Minister of Higher Education Rachid Haraoubia.

Independent workers' syndicates exist in the country, but Routier said that the government had marginalized them by creating parallel, state-controlled syndicates bearing the same names.

In an effort to appease demonstrators, the Algerian government in February lifted the state of emergency imposed in 1992. But Routier said the step was merely cosmetic, followed by no real political reforms on the ground. As long as the Algerian political system is not liberalized, demonstrators were unlikely to yield, he said.

"The proposed constitutional reform isn’t serious," Bouchachi said. "Nothing has changed since the lifting of the emergency law and the country is on the verge of a social explosion. Algeria is one of the only countries in the world where assembly is outlawed."

Last week, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue condemned the killing of an Algerian Human Rights Activist and called on the government to conduct an independent investigation into the death. Ahmed Kerroumi, a professor at the University of Oran and member of the opposition party Democratic and Social Movement went missing April 19, his battered corpse found in his office four days later.

Routier said the fragmentation of the protest movement is what sets Algeria apart from its neighbor Tunisia. Attempts to unite the movement in January failed amid popular fears of a violent crackdown by government, similar to that of 1992. That year, the government annulled elections in which the Islamic Party won, prompting a bloody civil war that cost the lives of over 150,000.

Source: All Headline News (AHN).
Link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90047170?Algeria%20Moves%20Quickly%20to%20Nip%20Protest%20in%20the%20Bud.