Abdellah Boussouf: What’s hidden in Algeria is Greater

The camps of Tindouf today are full of human rights violations, a big spread of slavery, arms and drug gangs, human trafficking and international terrorism threats.

The popular movement Algeria celebrated some days ago after an emergency stop due to the health precautions of the covid19 pandemic, and despite the arrests and trials among the movement’s activists and pioneers, continues on different social media; the protests continue due to the government’s inability to solve social and economic problems on the one hand. On the other hand, the government failed to provide convincing answers to Algerians queuing for bread, milk, meat, and other daily needs of the citizens in a country rich in oil and gas, and has got the potential to be competing with the gulf states in terms of infrastructure, health, education and others.

The first answer to this movement was to change the Algerian constitution, and bring the Algerian people into sterile discussions which do not provide answers to solve the milk crisis for instance. In addition, a group of writers and media professionals affiliated with the generals of Mouradia Palace contributed to floating the discussions by discussing other priorities such us constitutionalizing carrying out missions by the Algerian army outside the borders. the latter overshadowed the study of more important topics such as power-sharing, the democratic process, civil, social, and environmental rights, the Algerian wealth and others, what could have made the Algerian constitution more advanced and protective of the rights and liberties of the Algerian brothers.

Article 31 of the new constitution in Algeria authorizes the army to carry out missions outside the borders. One might ask whether this means humanitarian missions in Africa or the UN missions, or is it a direct threat to all the neighbors? Making the matter even worse, the president was given responsibility for the national defense in Article 91, which was interpreted as retaining the position of Minister of Defense.

With the return of the protests on Algiers streets and other major Algerian cities in front of the serious financial crisis, in addition to the absence of the president of the republic for health purposes which made him in an unconstitutional situation as the period exceeded 45 days according to Article 102 of the constitution, the generals of Al Mouradia Palace undertook the mission of silencing everyone who dared referring to this unconstitutional status.

The second answer will be given; what remains of the Algerian president appeared to announce, on February 18th, in a speech to the Algerian people dissolving the parliament and organizing premature elections, in addition to releasing some of the movement detainees. This means that the political elite in the country failed to manage the issues of this era; the same elite, parliament especially, however was the one which approved the provisions of the new constitutional amendment, and turned out the vote in November 2020’s constitutional referendum, while the Algerian president was on a medical trip in Germany.

By dissolving the parliament, the generals of Al Mouradia palace have presented the parliament members as scapegoats for the movement, and opened the way to rearranging the next era, with a constitution that preserves not only the “control button” for them but also their continuous domination over the political decision-making, economy, wealth … and squandering all this in files which do not mean anything to the Algerian people who live the conditions of poor countries as if having no huge wealth, no billions of reserves in hard currency, nor a position on the Mediterranean to make the country strong in terms of infrastructure, social equipment, and to reduce the unemployment rate, and raise the growth rate and per capita income of every Algerian citizen.

We in Morocco do not hesitate to freely and plainly say that Morocco witnessed, in February 2011, important popular protests, and that the famous March 9th speech was an announcement of the return of protesters to their homes and businesses. It was an announcement to engage in a series of workshops preparing for a new constitution with a participatory approach to answer all the demands of that stage and foresee upcoming stages. The discussions included all the raised issues: the sharing of power, expending the PM’s responsibilities, establishing the principles of democracy, good governance, regionalism, human rights and many other points. The workshops are still here, developing, changing and progressing as they are still open and present in all the Royal speeches and letters.

What was stated by Ahmed Ounais, the former Tunisian foreign affairs minister, in his interview with Awassir TV channel on February 19th of this year, that the Mouradia Palace generals are buying the voices of politicians and some African countries to recognize the Polisario separatists within the African organization, and are allotting unimaginable funds in exchange of supporting the Polisario thesis within committees, subsidiary bodies and other African institutions, is a very dangerous political revelation that clearly illustrates the wasting of the Algerian people’s wealth to satisfy the sick personal vanity of a few generals who inherited the sick military doctrine of the strong desire to destroy neighboring countries on the one hand, and the desire to continue proxy wars dating back to the cold war era.

The same guest speaker also raised, in a tone of regret for what was lost, that Algeria kept for itself a desert belonging to Tunisia; the temporal and political contexts though prevented the Tunisians from opposing the Algerian army to annex Tunisian desert. The former Tunisian minister, in a tone of success, plainly congratulated Morocco for defending its borders and Moroccan Sahara.

The notes of Maghreb and African diplomats conceal many details of an Algerian stock exchange set by the Algerian military regime not to transfer technology, progress, medical and health equipment, but to pump billions to buy votes and voices in the market of political slavery in the African organizations, aiming at changing the historical and geographical facts and creating an entity that threatens all its neighbors. The same entity has become an ember in the hands of the Algerian military and may burn it at any time.

The political cost of embracing the Polisario, whether inside Africa or in the world, is extremely high and makes a big hole in the state budget. It also has a moral that made of Algeria completely isolated at the international level, apart from their continuous attempts to buy votes and loyalties here and there.
The last of these costs is of a juridical and security nature; the camps of Tindouf today are full of human rights violations, a big spread of slavery, arms and drug gangs, human trafficking and international terrorism threats.

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