ALGIERS, 2 February 2005 — President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has won a power struggle with Algeria’s ruling party, paving the way for an amnesty offer to rebels that could end 13 years of civil strife and speed liberalization of the oil-rich economy.
Analysts said the National Liberation Front (FLN)’s decision, announced on Monday, to end almost two years of friction and rally behind Bouteflika, gives him a free hand to press ahead with his painful but wide-ranging reform plans.
“Bouteflika is now assured of complete fidelity from the former single party ruler (FLN),” the influential newspaper Le Quotidien d’Oran said in an editorial yesterday
Analysts said that for the first time Algeria has a democratically elected president who controls both the ruling party and the once-mighty military, enabling him to push ahead with political and economic reforms.
“A market economy is the most efficient system that will guarantee economic growth and create jobs,” Hassan Bahloul, FLN member and university professor, told Reuters. Privatizing the banking sector and opening up the key oil and gas industry are high priorities, analysts said.
But another FLN member, who asked to remain anonymous, was unhappy with the party’s decision. “The FLN is no longer a party but just a committee to support Bouteflika. I have no doubt this is a good day for Bouteflika but a bad day for democracy,” he said.
Algeria plunged into near-civil war in 1992 when Islamist militants declared war on the authorities for canceling elections an Islamic party was set to win. Human rights groups say some 150,000 people were killed in the resulting conflict.
Since Bouteflika was first elected in 1999, he has crushed most of the Islamic radical movements, reduced the role of the military in politics, brought Algeria stability and attracted much-needed foreign investment.
But a clash in 2003 with Prime Minister and FLN secretary-general Ali Benflis deprived him of party support for his re-election bid. Benflis withdrew the FLN from government, ran for president and had the party block or amend reforms.
Bouteflika won re-election as an independent in 2004, but the hostility of the ruling party paralyzed much of national politics and slowed his reform drive.
Over the past two years Bouteflika’s allies have gradually gained control of the FLN, purging it of Benflis supporters and prompting Benflis’s resignation last year. Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, the FLN’s interim leader since Benflis quit, will be appointed secretary-general.
On Monday, at a congress called to unify the party, the FLN agreed to offer Bouteflika the new post of party president and to support his plan for an amnesty to end the conflict.
FLN support for the initiative is vital because of its grassroots support network. The FLN was created out of the independence struggle against the French and was the only party from independence in 1962 until 1988, presiding over a Soviet-style socialist system.
