Algeria's tragic contradictions

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 1996, Pages

  Addi, Lahouari ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE LYON   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041386785     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.1996.0040     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. Robert Mortimer, "Islamists, Soldiers, and Democrats: The Second Algerian War," Middle East Journal 50 (Winter 1996): 18-39.
2. Besides the FLN, the FIS, and the FFS (a party ideologically akin to the social democratic parties of Europe that was started on the morrow of independence in 1963 by FLN cofounder Hocine Aït-Ahmed), the groups meeting at Rome included the Movement for Democracy in Algeria led by former president Ahmed Ben Bella, the Workers' Party, and the Algerian League for Human Rights. In the Rome pact, each of the signatories pledged that should it take power through the upcoming elections, it would respect the principles of universal suffrage, peaceful alternation in power, human rights, equality between men and women, and freedom of expression. The signatories also called on the other political forces in the country - especially the government - to join in these pledges.
3. It is nowhere written that the army forms the government. On the contrary, in all the various Constitutions (of 1963, 1976, and 1989) it is stipulated that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces, and that these must therefore obey the government that he directs.
4. The declaration of 19 June 1965 enumerated the criticisms addressed to Ahmed Ben Bella that were used to justify the coup d'état.
5. Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche, a product of the regime, was forced from office in 1991 because he contradicted the logic of the regime as a whole by seeking to undo the predatory rentier system through the introduction of market-based reforms.