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Algeria
Democratization, October 1988-January 11, 1992
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Abbassi Madani, leader of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)
Courtesy Middle East Report
Benjedid is given credit for responding to the country's most
extensive and destructive riots since independence with political
liberalization rather than suppression. For the next two years,
dramatic upheavals of the political system marked the opening
up of the political arena to public participation. The reasons
for Benjedid's response are variously seen as a means of furthering
his own political ambitions by altering the political configuration
in his favor, a sincere commitment to political reform and democratic
ideals, or a desperate effort to regain the political initiative.
Most likely, the impetus for reform was a combination of all three
factors.
In the weeks following the strikes, Benjedid tried to distance
himself from the party and the old guard. He dismissed Prime Minister
Mohamed Cherif Messadia, as well as the head of military security
and a number of other officials associated with the most conservative
factions of the FLN and the military. The noticeable absence of
FLN party cadres in the new technocratic government presaged the
president's own departure from the FLN leadership. On November
3, 1988, a number of earlier proposed reforms were approved in
a national referendum, and plans for revisions of the national
constitution were announced. The reforms included separation of
party and state, free representation in local and national elections,
and some redefinition of the executive powers.
The new constitution, accepted by national referendum in February
1989, marked the most significant changes in the ideological and
political framework of the country since independence. The ideological
commitment to socialism embodied in earlier constitutions was
missing, and the new document formalized the political separation
of the FLN and the state apparatus. The 1989 constitution allowed
for the creation and participation of competitive political associations,
further strengthened executive powers, diminished the role of
the military in the political triangle, and only briefly alluded
to the historical role of the FLN.
Subsequent legislation formally legalized political parties and
established a system of proportional representation in preparation
for the country's first multiparty elections. Proportional representation
was intended to benefit the FLN, but the new electoral code did
the exact opposite, magnifying the plurality of the Islamic Salvation
Front (Front Islamique du Salut--FIS) in the local and regional
elections of June 12, 1990. The FIS, competing with more than
twelve political parties and numerous independent candidates in
the country's first multiparty elections, captured the greatest
share of the anti-FLN/antiregime protest vote. The elections were
officially boycotted by the Berber Front of Socialist Forces (Front
des Forces Socialistes-- FFS) and Ben Bella's Movement for Democracy
in Algeria (Mouvement pour la Démocratie en Algérie--MDA), along
with a number of smaller opposition parties. About 65 percent
of the eligible voters participated in the elections. The high
turnout undoubtedly benefited the FIS, which as the largest, and
possibly the only, plausible challenge to the FLN received a good
percentage of its mandate as antiregime backlash. It has been
argued, however, that the 35 percent abstention rate resulted
largely from a deliberate political choice. Ethnic enclaves, especially
in the Berber region where voters might have been expected to
support such boycotting parties as the FFS, had some of the lowest
turnouts in the country, at around 20 percent.
Despite the devastating defeat dealt to the ruling party, the
June 1990 results went undisputed by the government, and the new
council members assumed their positions. The date for national
legislative elections was advanced to the following June, and
the country appeared well on its way toward achieving the region's
first multiparty system to transfer power peacefully to an opposition
party. Then on June 5, 1991, as campaigning opened for the country's
first national multiparty elections, the process came to a rapid
halt as public demonstrations erupted against the government's
March electoral reforms favoring the ruling party. The president
called in the army to restore order, declared martial law, dismissed
the government, and indefinitely postponed parliamentary elections.
Three months earlier, in March 1991, the government had presented
and passed a bill reminiscent of crude gerrymandering. The bill
increased the number of parliamentary seats while altering their
distribution to achieve over-representation in rural areas, where
the FLN's base of support rested. The bill also created a two-round
voting system--if no party received an absolute majority in the
first round, only the top two candidates would participate in
a second round runoff. The likely candidates in such a runoff
would be the FIS and the FLN. The FLN anticipated that the general
public, faced with only two choices, would favor the FLN's more
traditional and secular platform over a party that represented
Islamism. The remaining parties, it was thought, would win seats
in parliament in their regional strongholds but would be marginalized,
each expected to win no more than 10 percent of the vote.
Nearly every political party responded to this distortion of
the electoral process. The FIS decried the targeting of the Islamist
party by laws prohibiting the use of mosques and schools for political
purposes and laws severely restricting proxy voting by husbands
for their wives. The FFS and many other secular opposition parties
denounced the electoral changes as leaving only "a choice between
a police state and a fundamentalist state."
On May 25 the FIS called for a general strike. Tensions escalated,
and by early June the military was called in for the first time
since October 1988 to suppress mass protests and enforce martial
law. Specifically targeting Islamists, the military arrested thousands
of protesters, among them FIS leaders Abbassi Madani and Ali Benhadj
(also seen as Belhadj), who were later tried and sentenced to
twelve years in prison. The military also took advantage of the
situation to reassert its influence in politics, calling for the
resignation of Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche and his cabinet.
The new caretaker government consisted largely of technocrats,
a conservative elite drawn from the top ranks of the civil service
and former state-owned enterprises. Sid Ahmed Ghozali, until then
minister of foreign affairs and a former head of the state-owned
gas and oil company, was named prime minister.
The Ghozali government distanced itself from the FLN party cadres
while remaining subservient to the military. The FLN, meanwhile,
broke into several factions. Benjedid resigned from the party
leadership in July, alienating any remaining factions in the party
that supported his regime. In September 1991, the state of emergency
was lifted and new elections were set for December 1991 and January
1992.
Two months before the start of the elections, in October 1991,
the government issued a new electoral law whose bias was hardly
better disguised than that of the March reforms that had provoked
the initial demonstrations in June. The law increased the number
of seats in the assembly, redistributed them to favor FLN strongholds,
and omitted earlier provisions facilitating the participation
of independent candidates. Moreover, most of the FIS political
leadership was in prison (Madani and Benhadj had been joined by
the remaining six members of the majlis ash shura, the
FIS ruling council) and all newspapers were banned. Once again,
the government sought to ensure that the results of the elections
would be to its, and the military's, liking.
Nearly fifty political parties participated in the first round
of the elections on December 26, 1991. The result was another
clear victory for the FIS and an equally clear humiliation for
the FLN, which once again performed poorly. The FIS appeared certain
of achieving the two-thirds parliamentary majority necessary for
constitutional reform. Its next closest competitor was the FFS,
followed by the FLN as a distant third. With nearly 200 seats
to be decided in runoff elections set for January 16, 1992, it
appeared certain that a transfer of parliamentary power to the
opposition was imminent.
The military, however, quickly affirmed its unwillingness to
see power transferred to a political party it regarded as a threat
to the security and stability of the state. Calling the government's
position toward the Islamists "accommodating," the army called
for the president's resignation and the suspension of the scheduled
second round of elections.
Data as of December 1993
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