This article is translated from the monthly journal of Lutte Ouvrière, Lutte de Classe No. 243
November 2024: “les travailleurs face au durcissement du régime”.
On 7 September presidential elections were held in Algeria. Elected in December 2019, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had promised to build a “new Algeria”. At the time, the Hirak protests were calling for a boycott of the election. * Also called the “Revolution of Smiles”, these protests began on 16 February 2019, six days after then President Abdelaziz Bouteflika had announced his candidacy for a fifth presidential term in a signed statement. These protests were without precedent since the Algerian Civil War, and led the military to insist on Bouteflika's immediate resignation, on 2 April 2019. By early May, those close to the deposed administration, including the former president's younger brother Saïd, had been arrested.
Five years on, the working class is totally disillusioned. Despite Tebboune's populism, his supposed fight against corruption and his exploitation of war tensions, he has failed to establish his legitimacy. In the absence of a solid social base, the government is engaged in an authoritarian, headlong rush towards military dictatorship.
Popular discontent, fuelled by the high cost of living, unemployment, inflation and shortages, was accompanied by disgust for an electoral campaign marked by repression and which combined the grotesque with contempt. To justify the low turnout, the authorities claimed, without fear of ridicule, that spies had prevented voters from going to the polls! When the abstention of the working class merely reflected its rejection of a system that despises them and scorns all freedoms.
Political lockdown and repression
Well-known activists and political leaders were harassed, arrested and banned from speaking out during the campaign. ANIE, the Independent National Electoral Authority, began by ruling out candidates who might have been even mildly critical of the regime. Then it tried to disguise the massive abstention by announcing an average turnout of 48%, when in fact only 5.3 million out of 24.5 million registered voters had cast their ballots, representing a turnout of 20.2%. Finally, after protests from the two candidates opposed to Tebboune, the Constitutional Court amended the results so that they could be reimbursed for their campaign expenses! In the space of a week, Abdelaali Hassan, of the Islamist party MSP, was credited with 9.56% of the vote instead of 3.17%, and Youcef Aouchiche, of the Front des Forces Socialistes, with 6.14% instead of 2.16%. Those who prudently agreed to join in with the fraudulent game of democracy under this authoritarian regime thus gained a small reward.
In the days following the results, critical and ironic comments about the electoral masquerade abounded on social networks. But Algeria's leaders, having learnt the lesson of 2019 and fearing that these reactions could lead to a protest, reacted immediately. After the announcement of the results, the police carried out a wave of arrests, raiding people's homes, searching and arresting the authors of comments deemed critical of the regime.
More than two hundred prisoners of conscience arrested during Tebboune's first term are still languishing in prison. Some were incarcerated for months without trial, without knowing the charges against them. Their files are filled with fabricated reports. Others released as randomly as they were arrested, were then arrested again. During rallies by workers or citizens protesting against housing problems or water shortages, the authorities avoid confrontation and order arrests after the demonstrations have dispersed, or in the days that follow.
A whole series of freedom-destroying laws has given them free rein to carry out this new round of repression. The laws allow any action aimed at “gaining access to power or ...changing the system of governance by non-constitutional means” to be designated as an act of “terrorism”. Any criticism of so-called sensitive issues relating to the army, the security services, religion, the history of Algerian nationalism and its symbols (flag, anthem, etc. ) could result in heavy penalties. What these new laws have in common is that they aim to stir up nationalism in order to unite the population behind the government and disarm all opposition.
In Toggourt, a town in the north-east of the Sahara, Abla Guemari, a local figure in the Hirak movement, was arrested for “glorifying terrorism”. Her videos denounce the judicial and police harassment to which she has been subjected for the past five years, as well as the misery suffered by the population. On 2 October, women dared to brave the repression to demonstrate their support for her. The 27-year-old rapper Ahmed Djenidi, alias DAK, was arrested under a recent law on insults, designed to limit online harassment. His song? Sawt al Chaab (The voice of the people), which echoes the misery and the contemptuous and arbitrary treatment of young people, was a hit in Annaba - and those who ordered his arrest only succeeded in spreading his fame throughout the country, provoking such an outpouring of popular solidarity that they were forced to release him.
By bringing forward the election of 7 September, Tebboune certainly did not envisage such a stinging disavowal, given that during his first term in office he had tried to dress up as father of the nation, and win support through (albeit minimal) measures aimed at the working class.
The limits of populism
With the war in Ukraine, Algeria has become Europe's third-largest supplier of gas, behind Russia and Norway. Thanks to gas revenues, the government has been able to cushion the effects of the crisis, but the measures taken have not been enough to halt the collapse in purchasing power. This summer, millions of families were unable to buy the ingredients to prepare the meal for Eid el-the feast of the sheep, because they were plunged into poverty. In fact, the increase in pensions (for some pensioners) and the pay rise given to civil servants have very quickly been eaten up by inflation. What's more, the incomes of the vast majority of workers, both in the informal private sector and in public and private companies, have remained frozen.
Unemployment benefit paid to people who have never worked has brought relief to some families, but now the official Anem employment agency, overwhelmed by the two million claimants it has to register, is using every means possible to deregister as many claimants as possible, with the help of “France Travail” - the French government's employment agency. One of its techniques is to send out text messages in French, after which those who don't show up because they don't understand the language are immediately deregistered! Now, with the reactivation of subsidised employment contracts, the unemployed are faced with the choice of accepting any insecure job, or the risk of losing their benefit. Supposedly designed to help the unemployed, these contracts are a godsend for employers, who benefit from almost free labour.
Tebboune may have boasted of healthy economic indicators, with growth of more than 4. 2%, ranking Algeria as the third largest economy in Africa, but workers and the middle classes, who had hitherto been spared, have become poorer.
Gas extraction is running at full speed, a number of announced building, road and rail projects have got under way, and the pharmaceuticals, agri-food and ceramics sectors are booming. But inflation and the devaluation of the dinar have made all products more expensive. The price of the “household basket” has almost tripled. The minimum wage of six euros a day is not enough to feed a family.
The country's foreign exchange reserves are estimated at 70 billion dollars, but water shortages are ruining people's daily lives in many regions. This summer, at the height of the heatwave in the wilaya (administrative district) of Tiaret, after weeks of water shortages, riots broke out. Faced with the inaction of the authorities, the inhabitants occupied the roads and set up blockades to force the government to take emergency measures.
Tebboune has boasted that the country is not in debt, but many workers get into debt to pay for basic medical treatment, given the public health system's dire lack of resources. At the end of September, in Guezzam and Bordj Badji Mokhtar, south of the Sahara, on the border with Mali, dozens of people died of malaria and diphtheria in an over-stretched hospital due to a shortage of medicines and vaccines. In recent years, thousands of doctors have fled from an unfunded public hospital system to work in the private sector, or have gone abroad. As skilled workers, they can look forward to a better life in Europe or North America. This is not the case for the would-be refugees; or “harragas” or “document burners”, who risk their lives to set sail for Spain and who Europe tries to turn back. At the beginning of September, in one day, six hundred harragas took this risk. Their numbers are ever-increasing and include families with infants.
The so-called fight against corruption
To distract from the social situation, the media regularly reported on the trials of the Issaba, the mafia gang of some thirty big bosses, ministers and senior army officers who became rich under Bouteflika and were thrown into prison under pressure from the Hirak. The requisitioning of their assets and fortunes abroad made the headlines, and Tebboune repeatedly pointed out that the Treasury had recovered 20 billion dollars in this way. It was for disputing this figure that journalist Ihsane El Kadi was sentenced to seven years in prison.
This “clean hands operation” has not done away with corruption, as illustrated by the scandal No, involving court-appointed administrators. It was revealed that these administrators, charged with managing the assets of corrupt bosses, had paid themselves huge salaries by embezzling money intended for their companies! Thousands of employees at factories shut down after their bosses were imprisoned have every reason to be furious, having found themselves without pay or work overnight. Under the pressure of their mobilisation, the government promised compensation, but taking advantage of the Covid crisis, never paid it to them. So today, when this same government promises to relaunch the activity of around thirty of these companies to help workers back into jobs in construction and car assembly nobody really believes it.
The corruption inherent in capitalism, which plagues the whole of society in this world, is even worse in poor countries, and their “clean hands” operations are just a sham. While a few corrupt bosses linked to Algeria's Bouteflika clan might have been sent to prison, the others have a free hand to shamelessly exploit workers, with the complicity of the authorities whose palms they liberally grease.
The bosses' contempt
In the private sector, where job insecurity is widespread, the bosses are taking advantage of unemployment to impose their conditions. In many companies, work is carried out in deplorable conditions with no regard for safety. In July, at a lighter factory in Ouled Moussa, near Boumerdès, six workers died and three others were seriously injured when a gas tank exploded, setting the whole factory on fi re in a matter of minutes. The hundred or so workers, most of them women, were shocked by the loss of their comrades, and by the fact that the courts did not hold the murderous boss to account.
Nor are bosses worried when they pay wages two or three months late. This is the reality for tens of thousands of workers in public and private companies. Some angrily report that they have had to stop sending their children to school for lack of resources, and are threatened with eviction. Forced to go into debt to feed their families, workers have to fight to get what they are owed. In recent months, this has been the case for workers at Construb-est in Annaba, TONIC in Tipaza and ENIEM in Tizi-Ouzou. In September, the anger of refuse collectors in the municipality of El Qol, in the wilaya of Skikda, erupted. They were fed up with delayed wages and bonuses, and the fact that they had to collect rubbish without the right equipment, not to mention the deductions from their wages at the drop of a hat.
Although the workers are not resigned to their fate, the balance of power is not in their favour at the moment. They cannot count on the main trade union confederation, the UGTA, which is subservient to the government. Its leader, Amar Takjout, did not hesitate to describe Tebboune as the country's “leading trade unionist” on the occasion of May Day, even though Tebboune has passed laws criminalising strikes and restricting the activities of trade unions, which are non-existent in private companies and little respected in the public sector.
The seafarers at the port of Annaba have had bitter experience of this. On the eve of Ramadan, against the advice of the UGTA, they went on strike to demand higher wages, a new collective agreement and new internal regulations. Relying on new laws prohibiting the right to strike in so-called sensitive sectors, management declared the strike illegal and took ten sailors to court. Takjout, the leader of the UGTA, showed the greatest contempt for the workers' demands, declaring that his confederation was not there to feed the workers (he said it was not “un syndicat de tubes digestif”!). The secretary of the port workers' federation, sent to the site to convince the workers to call off the strike, was unsuccessful. For a week, the sailors blocked access to the port and refused to provide the minimum statutory service. They stood firm in the face of intimidation from the courts, the UGTA and the media, who accused them of wanting to starve the country. Determined, the sailors forced management to grant them bonuses and cancel the new internal regulations. Since then, the company has been trying to intimidate the most militant workers, and is using the courts to prosecute the ringleaders, in an attempt to regain the ground lost.
The management of the port of Annaba, like that of many other companies, will now be able to rely on military personnel to keep a lid on workers' combativeness. In June, a decree was adopted which allows officers to “take over certain senior State functions within strategic and sensitive sectors in the name of the sovereignty and vital interests of the country”.
In recent weeks, some workers on the railways, in seawater desalination plants and at airports have looked on the enforcing senior army officers sent to their workplaces with a favourable eye, so disillusioned are they with the bureaucratic spirit and mediocrity of their management. Some have the illusion that the competence of the military will enable everything to run more smoothly.
This military tutelage may perhaps improve the efficiency of companies, but certainly not in the interests of workers and the population. It will not curb exploitation or corruption.
Tebboune and Saïd Chengriha, the omnipresent Chief of Staff on the political scene, are constantly talking about the threat posed by certain states, first and foremost Morocco, with which Algeria is competing for the role of leading regional power. This exacerbated nationalism is defended by all the political parties which, from the Islamists to the democrats and Louiza Hanoune's Workers' Party (PT), help to fuel it.
The aim of this policy is to set Algerian workers against Moroccan workers, to the benefit of the Algerian bourgeoisie. Yet it is the Algerian and in the case of Morocco, the Moroccan bosses, who exploit both sets of workers, refusing to pay their wages. It is they, and the governments at their service, who wage a merciless social war against them.
The climate of anti-Moroccan warmongering is accompanied by a record military budget of 20 billion euros, by far the largest item of state expenditure, which deprives public services of the resources they need, even though they are essential to the population.
The authorities use the chaos reigning in the Sahel and Arab countries - Libya, Syria, Yemen, Gaza and now Lebanon - to present the army as the sole guarantor of the country's stability. But if the army positions itself at the borders and in so-called strategic companies, it is above all to guarantee the interests of the Algerian bourgeoisie against rival bourgeoisies, but also against possible workers' revolts.
Four years after the end of the Hirak, workers who are not resigned to the current situation are questioning the reasons for the failure of this movement. Disappointed by the parties that were incapable of offering a perspective that would put an end to the hardships of life and employer arbitrariness, many have come to reject the political struggle. The Islamist or democratic parties told them: “This is not the time for your interests as workers; democracy and the nation come first”. As always, the words “nation” and “democracy” serve above all to mask the fact that these forces defend above all the interests of the bourgeois class.
The failure of the Hirak shows the extent to which workers must come together and organise not only in trade unions and in defence of their immediate interests, but also and above all in defence of their political interests. The bourgeoisie has many parties defending its interests; the working class must have its own, a party that affirms that the workers, who do everything in society, must lead it. New revolts will inevitably arise, and they must be able to open up a perspective for the exploited classes, the small farmers, the workers in the informal sector and the small traders who are also suffering the effects of the crisis. For this to happen, workers will have to take the lead and put forward their objectives, in order to overthrow the social order that keeps them oppressed.
16 October 2024
* The 2019-2021 Algerian protests.