International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Algeria: did the presidential election take place?

Nadir Djermoune — 2020-02-23T11:06:13Z

13 December, 2019, 43rd Friday of mobilisation: during the presidential election, dozens of demonstrators parade through the streets of Algiers, noses covered with flour – an allusion to the trafficking of cocaine and money laundering alleged against the son of the new president Abdeldmadjid Tebboune in 2018, who has since been in temporary detention.

- IV541 - February 2020 / Algeria

Revolution, project and democracy - notes on the Hirak

Nadir Djermoune — 2019-10-16T02:15:37Z

Now, in its seventh month of uninterrupted mobilization, the Algerian popular protest movement Hirak, considering its spread, scale and lack of political resolution, can be seen as a long-term development generating a debate which is more conceptual than punctual. Terms like revolution, democracy, constituent process, social class, oligarchy, issaba and bourgeoisie, are the key words that structure debate and action.

- IV537 - October 2019 / Algeria

Political rupture or revolution as a project- notes and reflections on the protest movement

Nadir Djermoune — 2019-06-03T06:45:49Z

On its 13th Friday of mobilization, the popular movement that Algeria has been witnessing since February 22, 2019 confirmed its serene and peaceful demand for a fundamental and radical change in the system of political governance. This demand is accompanied by questions of a theoretical and methodological order, until now forgotten and repressed by the Algerian political and intellectual universe. These questions range from legal processes to economic mechanisms, from sociological logic to historical dynamics, which affect the past and the future of the country. These are questions that do not have a mere academic value. They structure thought but also political practice.

- IV533 - June 2019 / Algeria

Democracy, the constituent assembly and the challenge of transition

Nadir Djermoune — 2019-04-28T08:12:44Z

It is the political question that is now structuring the actions and debates in the popular protest movement known as “Hirak”. Since 22 February 2019, the date of the emergence of the movement that occupies the street and Algerian public space, the demand has quickly passed from its ethical dimension, the rejection of the candidacy of an old and sick president for his fifth term, towards the political issues that underpinned this candidacy and its corollaries relating to the organization and democratic exercise of Algerian government.

- IV531 - April 2019 / Algeria

Maghreb: elements of a debate on the situation.

Nadir Djermoune — 2017-03-11T09:25:38Z

1. The Maghreb region - Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - is traversed by social movements of revolutionary scope, at uneven rhythms. The most representative and advanced example of this revolutionary dynamic is obviously the movement unleashed by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia in 2011. This today constitutes a model reference in the eyes of the movements and protests of the region. Ten years previously, in 2001, Algeria experienced the same type of protest movement, with the same breadth and a higher level of organisation, but without leading to any political change in the structure of the regime. The movement was to some degree marginalized by its territorial confinement to Kabylie and its identity-based and cultural connotations linked to its specificity in the political history of the country. Nonetheless the social and democratic dimensions profoundly structured the movement (Mohamed Guermah, known as Massinissa, died on April 20, 2001, after having been wounded by sub-machine gun fire; his death unleashed a vast revolt).

- IV506 - March 2017 / Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco

Under the yoke of old and new superpowers, will Algeria always be an "emerging country"?

Nadir Djermoune — 2014-01-19T18:36:34Z

1 - François Hollande's “wisecrack” about the "safe and sound " return of his Minister of the Interior following the latter's visit to Algeria, the broadcast on the French TV channel Canal Plus showing a montage of images that illustrated the bizarre nature of the discussion between the president and his guest, the head of the French government, Jean-Marc Ayrault, must have been greeted with hollow laughter in the Algerian capital!

- IV468 - January 2014 / Algeria

A president and system without opposition?

Nadir Djermoune — 2013-12-10T07:25:49Z

Some months away from the presidential elections, Algeria has a sick head of state, a political class which is clinging to the actions of the president and a people which has rediscovered its pride through its national football teal qualifying for the World Cup in Brazil. Is there anyting more?

- IV467 - December 2013 / Algeria