What’s happening in Algeria? - HIRAK
HIRAK - ALGERIA
GENERAL VIEW:
Algeria simmered during the “Arab Spring” ten years ago, but Bouteflika remained in power. However, the country has been at the forefront of the region's second wave of popular uprisings, which began in 2018. Protesters first marched on a national scale on February 22, 2019, repeating the act every Friday until the pandemic hit a year later. Hirak demanded the departure of the ruling elite and a transition toward more democratic governance.
Algerian authorities initially tolerated the protests. But they resisted demands for a negotiated political transition and, in mid-2019, began jailing prominent Hirak figures on such blatantly political charges as “harming national unity.” No other “Arab Spring” or “Arab Spring 2.0” country experienced such a sustained mobilization of nonviolent and large-scale protests, a point of pride for Algerians marked by the country’s horrific political violence in the 1990s.
But when the pandemic hit, and the Hirak suspended outdoor protests, authorities tightened the vise on the movement, jailing some of its leading figures. Then, as homebound activists took to social media, authorities prosecuted dozens for their peaceful online posts.
THE HIRAK MOBILIZATION
Bouteflika
According to an article written by Frédéric Volpi “Algeria: When Elections Hurt Democracy”, he mentions that the president’s bad health led many citizens to question if he was fit for the position. The regime's shameless attempt to maintain the status quo by keeping him in power sparked a huge and sudden call for transition. With the announcement of Boutelika’s candidacy, some protesters targeted portraits of the president that were displayed in public spaces.The press began reporting large street demonstrations across the country’s major towns on February 22. Social media served as tools for coordinating the protests more effectively, providing information on police activity, and publicizing the movement’s overall themes and ethos.
On Tuesdays and Fridays before prayer, students, socialists, and feminists begin to rally and start occupying large public spaces. When Friday prayers were completed, they were joined by large crowds of mosque-goers of all ages, especially those from the poorer suburbs. On Friday, March 1, the demonstrators made their first public display of power, with media reports estimating crowds of two to three million people across the world. Opposition leaders who had originally declared themselves as presidential candidates had decided to withdraw due to the overwhelming scale of protesters. Following another millions strong round of protests on March 29, Bouteflika finally relented. On April 2, he announced that he was stepping down.
After Bouteflika
The demonstrators now called for the resignation of the provisional government and for new procedures that would prevent the authorities from engaging in electoral manipulation.
The main target of the protesters became the “3 Bs”—Noureddine Bedoui (the prime minister recently appointed by Bouteflika), Abdelkader Bensalah (the interim president, formerly president of the upper house), and Tayeb Belaiz (the president of the Constitutional Council).
Millions of Algerians continued to mobilize in weekly Hirak demonstrations against the proposed presidential election during April and May. The Hirak, like many other contemporary political movements, lacked a clear leader; when the names of specific members became well-known, it was usually because they had been detained by the police.
On September 15, interim president Bensalah announced that a new presidential election would take place on December 12, a date that was first suggested by the chief of staff. This announcement had little impact on the Hirak.However, as soon as the campaign started on November 13, all of the candidates were met with a barrage of public criticism. Candidates found it incredibly difficult to hold public hearings anywhere in the world because they were routinely interrupted by demonstrators. Campaign materials were lost or vandalized, and so were candidate images shown in public locations.
Police brutality
Evidence from the 2011 riots indicated that Algeria’s security forces used repression to greatest effect as a preventive measure in the leadup to protest. Once protests reached critical mass, the security services were instead inclined to contain and manage them until they ran out of steam. More than a hundred people did remain in custody at the time of the December 2019 elections. The majority of arrests and detentions were linked to the display of Berber flags, which the chief of staff had singled out as a threat to national unity.
Non violent method of protesters
In 2019, the speed and informality of the mobilization process, as well as the number of protesters, made the security forces opt quickly for containment. This choice was reinforced by the protesters’ own strategy of not antagonizing the security services. In addition, the protesters emphasized the importance of maintaining a peaceful campaign. “Silmiya, silmiya” (“peaceful, peaceful”) was a traditional phrase from the beginning. Considering the scale of the demonstrations, the number of demonstrators and activists arrested remained remarkably low.
The December Election
After two successive failures at organizing a presidential election, Algeria’s rulers made it clear in September that this time they were serious. While the Hirak declared that it was still opposed to electing a president so long as the regime remained in control of the electoral process. The Algerian presidential election took place on December 12th, 2019 against the shadow of massive street protests.The new president is a longtime member of the ruling elite whose leadership has little legitimacy in the eyes of the protesters.
Manipulation of elections
Voters’ reluctance to go to the polls underscored the lack of popular support for Tebboune and his fellow candidates. Electoral manipulation undoubtedly boosted the already low official turnout number, as in all Algeria’s previous electoral contests, and the same can be assumed of the claim that 58 percent of those who voted chose Tebboune. Still, in the four presidential elections of the Bouteflika era, the official participation rate was never below 50 percent, and the president always took more than 80 percent of the vote. This implies that Tebboune's election victory was staged with the aim of strengthening the country's pseudo democratic system's credibility at home and abroad.The Hirak overwhelmingly rejected both the election process and Tebboune’s victory. In a show of goodwill toward the Hirak, some but not all protesters have been released from jail.
CONCLUSION: The Hirak mobilization in Algeria illustrated both the strength and the limitations of grassroots mobilization against electoral authoritarianism. The more the public perceives elections to be meaningless, the less effective pseudodemocratic institutions are as a tool of governance
Written and researched by Oshina Magar, UAE and managed by P. Unnikrishnan, India. In depth insights from our youth friend Cherine, Algeria.
References
Goldstein, Eric. “Algeria's Hirak Protest Movement Marks Second Anniversary.” Human Rights Watch, 23 Feb. 2021, www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/23/algerias-hirak-protest-movement-marks-second-anniversary.
Volpi, Frédéric. “Algeria: When Elections Hurt Democracy.” Journal of Democracy, Johns Hopkins University Press, 9 Apr. 2020, muse.jhu.edu/article/753201/summary.