THURSDAY’S PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS in Algeria was described beforehand by the country’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as a “a matter of life and death”. That is not the sort of language normally associated elsewhere with elections but in this case he was speaking the truth.
Energy-rich Algeria is the Arab world’s most violent place. In the 11 years since the election victory of the then Islamic opposition party was annulled on the orders of the military, the country has lived through a state of virtual and horrific civil war. Over 100,000 people have been murdered, as many again injured and whole areas depopulated as people fled in fear for their lives, many of them preferring exile abroad rather than live the nightmare of permanent insecurity.
Algeria needs an end to its troubles. It needs stability. The key to that must be a willingness from all parts of the political spectrum to work together within the system rather than permanently trying to pull it apart simply because they are not in charge. The rallying call from President Bouteflika on the eve of the poll that Algerians should “rebel against the advocates of division and against those responsible for the misery” that they have had to ensure these past 11 years, and elect a representative Parliament to bring about stability hit the nail on the head.
This is precisely what Algerians needed to do. They have to stand up together and say no to brutality, murder, intolerance and extremism. The only way they can do that is by exercising a collective political will — and the only way to achieve that is by electing a government that truly represents the majority of people. Sadly, the election is not going to provide the healing that Algeria longs for. The miserable 47 percent turnout — the lowest recorded since independence in 1962, robs the new Parliament of legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the population. Worse still, it was not apathy that produced such a low turnout, it was a deliberate boycott, engineered by secular opposition parties who did so because they said the contests would be rigged and that in any case Parliament would be of no consequence because it cannot hold to account the government or the military who they claim are the real power in the country. It was a negative and, in Algeria’s case, very dangerous message — because with the call clearly heeded by a majority of the population the country is left politically rudderless in a violently stormy sea. It was gross irresponsibility.
The opposition cannot possibly prejudge what the new Parliament would have been like and what powers it would have been able to draw to itself if they all had taken part in the contest. With a 70 percent or 80 percent turnout, Parliament would have been in a very strong position to claim the moral high ground. Instead, it emerges weaker. The opposition cannot avoid the accusation that they have done this: They have rejected compromise, and in doing so have extended Algeria’s imprisonment in a cycle of violence and murder. The daily round of slaughter will continue; and because the violence will not cease, the country’s dire economic condition will not be improved either.
There is one other consequence from this lost opportunity to be feared: national fragmentation. Hostility to the poll was greatest in Berber-speaking Kabylia. The region’s capital, Tizi Ouzou, recorded a turnout of just 1.84 percent. Quite clearly, the local political parties, who had called for a boycott, command massive support among the population. At the moment, those parties say they want to remain within Algeria. But the divide between Algiers and the Berbers is becoming greater all the time. That raises the possibility of what is already a strongly nationalist movement transforming into a secessionist one.
