Abdelaziz Bouteflika Algeria

In January 1995, most opposition parties
(including the banned FIS) met in Rome and agreed on a
national platform for resolving the crisis, but the government
rejected it. A multiparty presidential election was held later
that year, and incumbent General Liamine Zeroual won by
61% of the vote. A new political party, the National and
Democratic Rally (Rassemblement National pour la
Démocratie—RND), was created to support his candidacy. In
1996, a constitutional amendment was introduced. It reconfirmed
Islam as the state’s religion, prohibited parties based
on “religious, linguistic, racial, gender, corporatist or
regional” grounds, and reinforced the powers of the
president. A second parliamentary chamber, the Council of
the Nation, was created. New parliamentary elections held in
June 1997 resulted in Algeria’s first multiparty Parliament.
The main winners were RND, FLN, and the moderate
Islamist parties, Movement of Society for Peace (Mouvement
de la Société pour la Paix—MSP) and al-Nahda (Renaissance).
The RND and the FLN constituted a progovernment
coalition that controlled an absolute majority and seven
ministerial posts each. The Islamists were also awarded seven
posts.
Economic and security conditions continued to worsen,
and thousands of people were killed. The Islamist violence
widened and new organizations, mainly the Armed Islamic
Group (GIA) and the Army of Islamic Salvation (AIS),
engaged in a series of killings. Their victims were not only
military and police personnel, but also civilians and
foreigners. The state countered with measures that left scores
dead and thousands jailed. It was in this context that Zeroual
decided in the fall of 1998 to resign from the presidency, well
before the end of his term, and call for a new vote in April
1999. Abdelaziz Bouteflika quickly became the candidate
favored by the military and many elements in society.
Following his election, Bouteflika succeeded in establishing a
tentative peace in Algeria. In response to his election, the FIS
dissolved its armed branch, the Islamic Salvation Army, in
January 2000.
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born on 2 March 1937 in the
Moroccan town of Oujda, near the Algerian border. In 1956,
he joined the Algerian nationalist movement, which was
fighting for independence from France. When Algeria gained
its independence in 1962, President Ahmed Ben Bella
appointed Bouteflika to be minister of youth, sports, and
tourism. The following year he became the foreign minister.
Despite the overthrow of the Ben Bella government by
Colonel Houari Boumedienne in 1965, Bouteflika was able to
retain his post until 1979. As foreign minister, he distinguished
himself by successfully articulating Algeria’s
economic and political nationalism in the 1970s. He led
negotiations with France that preceded the 1971 nationalization
of the hydrocarbon industry. Bouteflika chaired the
1974 United Nations’ special session on the new international
economic order. He was also successful in making Algeria’s
influence felt on the nonaligned movement.
After the death of Boumedienne in December 1978, Bouteflika
was considered a possible successor. However, he lost
the ensuing power struggle and the military imposed Colonel
Chadli Benjedid as Algeria’s new president. Bouteflika
remained in the government as minister without portfolio and
advisor until 1980 when Benjedid dismissed him. The
following year, Bouteflika was accused of having embezzled
close to us$12 million while he was foreign minister. Bouteflika
abandoned Algerian politics and spent 16 of the next 19
years in exile in Switzerland. There he worked as a consultant
to several Persian Gulf nations.
RISE TO POWER
In February 1999, Bouteflika returned to Algeria after a
group of top military, political, and business leaders
persuaded him to run in the upcoming presidential elections.
Six other candidates were on the ballot, but two days before
the elections they decided to withdraw from the vote after the
state refused to act on their complaints of electoral irregularities.
By default, Bouteflika became the only candidate. This
situation hurt the credibility of both the poll and its winner.
Bouteflika had secured the support of the military and that of
the FLN, the RND, and the MSP parties. Being from the era
of the authoritarian but well-liked President Boumedienne, he
was thought to be the ideal person to lead his country out of
its deep and multidimensional crisis. According to official
results, he won the election on 15 April 1999 by 73.79%, or
7.4 million, of the vote cast, becoming the first civilian
president since 1965. In 2003, he announced his plans to run
for reelection in 2004 and sought support for his reelection
bid from French president Jacques Chirac.
LEADERSHIP
During his electoral campaign and in his first presidential
speech on 29 May 1999, Bouteflika promised to work hard
to restore the trust of Algerians in their institutions,
something that he regarded as essential for ending political
violence in the country. To dispel the distrust that resulted
from allegations that the election was rigged, he initiated
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dialogue with the opposition party leaders and sought to
implement reforms that would make the election process less
vulnerable to rigging. Initially, Bouteflika enjoyed the support
of the army, which holds real power in the country. Bouteflika
has been called the “consensus candidate,” since he has
sought support of all the parties in crafting a solution to the
violence rooted in the country’s economic crisis.
Bouteflika is committed to solving the crisis, but balancing
the interests of international investors, Islamic fundamentalists,
and the army has proven challenging. By early 2003 he
was reportedly ready to purge the government of army
generals, citing their iron-fisted control of the government.
DOMESTIC POLICY
In his first speech after taking office in 1999, Bouteflika
acknowledged that the state’s institutions were ailing from
abuses of authority, inefficiency, waste, and corruption. He
indicated that social cohesion and peace depended on a regeneration
of the state, which must be based on the rule of the
law and on the promotion of the interests of the entire nation.
Among the tasks at hand were a much-needed reform of the
educational system, a better-orchestrated economic reform, a
firm and tangible encouragement of private investment, the
modernization of agriculture, and special attention to the
country’s youth. He reaffirmed Algeria’s Islamic and Arab-
Berber identity and called for the renewal of regional
integration efforts. When he hosted the July 1999 Organization
of African Unity (OAU) summit meeting in Algiers, 44
heads of African states were present, an indication that others
in the region were open to working with the Bouteflika-led
government.
Like his predecessors, Bouteflika is committed to reviving
the economy and to addressing the most urgent social grievances
while maintaining law and order. His task is huge,
complex, and not without risks. In May 2000, as his first year
in office was coming to an end, 30 members of the national
assembly presented Bouteflika with a signed petition
expressing dissatisfaction over the limited amount of legislative
work completed during the previous 12 months. By
2001, Bouteflika still had not achieved an end to political
violence and continued to struggle to unite the country’s
many factions. He reshuffled his government in May 2001,
hoping to eliminate internal opposition to his programs.
In April 2001, Bouteflika was forced to face the deep
resentment of citizens in the Kabylie region (between Algiers
and Constantine). The Berbers who live in the region
adamantly adhere to Tamazight, their ethnic language,
refusing to adopt the official government language of Arabic.
The death of a Kabylie teenager while in police custody
sparked violent protests, but Bouteflika initially took ten days
to issue a response, adding to the resentment. Bouteflika, in
an attempt to address Berber sentiments, took several actions
aimed at winning their support (or at least calming their
violence). In March 2002, Bouteflika announced that the
Berber language would be added to the Constitution as an
official language of the country (along with Arabic).
While concentrated in Kabylie, the violence was seen by
many observers as a reflection of the frustration felt by all
Algerian youth, who face widespread unemployment and
repression at the hands of the Algerian military. As of 2002,
about half of the population was under the age of 20. The
economy must come out of its slump to offer significant job
prospects.
Bouteflika expressed commitment to speeding up privatization
to stimulate economic development, but after two
years in office his efforts had not made much headway. He
seemed more interested in mediating international crises in
the region than attending to the country’s domestic problems.
Frustrated by his inability to make legislative progress,
following the October 2002 legislative elections Bouteflika
proposed a law that would exclude any political party that
did not garner at least 5% of the total votes cast from participating
in future political contests, a move designed to cut
down on political conflict.
In December 2002, in a conciliatory gesture, Bouteflika
marked Id al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy period of
Ramadan, by pardoning or reducing the jail terms of 5,000
prisoners.
FOREIGN POLICY
The United States and some Western European countries have
criticized the way the last presidential election was
conducted, but they have refrained from criticizing Algeria’s
human rights practices. This tolerance has always been predicated
on there being at least a semblance of a democratic
process in place. The last election failed to offer such
semblance.
At the time when Bouteflika was foreign minister, Algeria
played a central role in anticolonialism, the nonaligned
movement, the call for a restructuring of the international
system, and the establishment of a new international
economic order to help poor countries develop and gain
economic independence. It has also fulfilled an important role
within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC). Algeria has been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian
struggle for statehood and has, since 1975, given moral
and material support to the Western Sahara liberation
movement (POLISARIO) in its struggle against Morocco’s
annexation of former Spanish Sahara. Under Bouteflika’s
leadership, Algeria remained committed to these issues and
principles, but began to be more outspoken in the international
arena. In a September 2002 address before the General
Assembly of the United Nations, Bouteflika described Iraq’s
decision to allow the return of weapons inspectors as “courageous”
and urged the nations of the world to lift sanctions
against Iraq in response. During later discussions in the
General Assembly, Bouteflika emphasized that the creation of
a Palestinian state was critical to ending international
terrorism.
Bouteflika has begun to try to reestablish Algeria’s influential
role in world affairs in general, and among the Third
World in particular, by attending mediation efforts in various
trouble spots. However, he has been criticized for not
focusing more attention on the needs of his own people,
which are at a crisis point due to years of civil conflict and
deprivation.
In July 2001, Bouteflika traveled to the United States to
meet with President George W. Bush. He sought support for
an increase in U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in the
economy in areas other than the petrochemical industry. After
the terrorist events of 11 September 2001, Bouteflika was one
of the first leaders of a Muslim nation to offer assistance to
the United States. In October 2002, Bouteflika participated in
the ninth summit of the African Union held in Beirut,
Lebanon, where, at Bouteflika’s urging, the African Union
adopted a plan to implement border controls and information
exchange to curb international terrorism.
ADDRESS
Presidence de la Republique
El Mouradia
Algiers, Algeria
E-mail: President@el-mouradia.dz
REFERENCES
“Algeria: President Pardons Thousands of Prisoners on End
of Ramadan.” Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, December 2,
2002.
“Algeria: President Said Set to Turn Against Army Generals.”
Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, January 5, 2003.
Amodeo, Chris. “Tamazight, the Berber Language, Is to Be
Given Official Constitutional Status by Algeria’s President,
Abdelaziz Bouteflika.” Geographical, June 2002, vol. 74,
no. 6, p. 6.
“A One Horse Race: Can Algeria’s New President Find
Solutions, or Is He Part of the Problem?” Time International,
April 26, 1999, vol. 153, no. 16, p. 45.
Spencer, William. The Middle East. 8th ed. Guilford, CT:
Dushkin/McGraw-Hill, 2000.
“The Warm Embrace: Europe Is Showing Signs That It’s Keen
to Better Its Often Uneasy Relations with the Maghreb
Nations.” Time International, June 26, 2000, vol. 155, no.
25, p. 30.
Profile researched and written by Azzedine Layachi, St. John's
University (9/99; updated 2/2003).