Algeria and the Surrealistic Vote

To get a taste of the kind of bias one finds toward Bouteflika in much of the media, understand that El Moudjahid, the semi-official French-language paper, describes Bouteflika as
“l’homme qui défend les valeurs authentiquement algériennes dans leur triple dimension l’amazighité, l’islam et l’arabité pour imprégner les valeurs nationales, de paix et de fraternité à la jeunesse”.

Bouteflika always wins the elections with a surrealistic 84.99 per cent of the votes cast. When Bouteflika first ran for the presidency in 1999, all opposition candidates dropped out on the eve of the election. Why do you think all the candidates gave up? The vote was marred by fraud, of course!

Bouteflika is the chosen one by the shadowy military structure that we call (the Algerians and I) "the power" or the "deciders."

Bouteflika presented himself as the savior of the nation: the only man who could guarantee the eradication of terrorism and the miracle of the "national reconciliation"!!!

But Bouteflika does not rule the country! It is the army, the Algerian Generals, who rule Algeria with their cruel methods and their repressive methods. Bouteflika is indeed trying to limite the army's function and role but it is very difficult since the army is still the actor who decides for Algeria! We do not have any laws that limit the power of the army and the security forces. The gendarmerie, the army and the security forces kill the demonstrators without impunity.

Impunity, in the human rights context, refers to the lack of accountability for human rights violations committed by the agents of state. The army, which considers itself as the guardian of justice, is killing the demonstrators.

The FLN, since its foundation in 1954, represented itself as the "incarnation of the unified nation whose survival had to be guaranteed by an all-compassing state represented by the FLN regime" (Lamchichi:1991). As Frantz Fanon said it so well, in order to be free, the subjugated Algerians have to purge their minds of the regime left by the FLN.


Hutchinson, Martha, Crenshaw, 1978. Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-
62. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institute Press.

Lamchichi, Adderrahim, 1991. L’Algérie en crise. Paris: L’Harmattan

FLN is the acronym for Front de Libération nationale. FLN launched the Independence War in 1954. FLN was the only legal party since the independence 1962 up to 1989.

http:///www.mission-algerie.ch/anglais/index2.htm. Preamble to the 1996 Constitution.