Algeria’s Ruling Cabal Can’t Buy Its Way Out of Trouble

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- A year has passed since Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to resign, after months of intense anti-regime protests. The former president, who recently turned 83, has remained mostly home-bound ever since, but continues to evade justice for two decades of corruption and misrule.

In the months between his ouster and the election of his successor, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, military courts tried and sentenced a number of Bouteflika’s close associates, including his brother Said and his former intelligence chief, Mohamed Mediene, known as the “Butcher of Algiers.” Since being sworn in, Tebboune has pursued smaller fry, such as the former director-general of police.

But there is little appetite to bring Bouteflika before a court of law. The prevailing hope in the Algerian political elite is that the old man, an invalid since his 2013 stroke, will follow his longtime brother-in-arms, army chief Gaid Salah, who died in December without facing a trial.

That would certainly suit the cabal of military, political and business leaders, known as “le pouvoir,” or “the power,” that flourished under Bouteflika and still controls all the key levers of the state. Tebboune is himself a member of this elite — he served as housing minister, and briefly as prime minister, under Bouteflika. 

The power’s continuing grip in Algeria’s was visible in the December presidential election: The five candidates on the ballot were all regime loyalists. No wonder the young Algerians who made up the “Hirak” protest movement skipped the vote — turnout was less than 40% — and opted to keep the pressure on the government.

While the protests continued, at least some hope remained of Tebboune being forced to bring Bouteflika to justice. But the coronavirus epidemic — Algeria is one of Africa’s worst-hit countries — has forced Hirak to suspend the protests, giving the presidents, past and present, some breathing room.

Not that Tebboune can afford to exhale: He faces a surfeit of crises as he walks the line between the power and the people. Apart from the epidemic, the collapse of oil prices has devastated an economy that depends on hydrocarbon exports for more than 85% of exports, and which never fully recovered from the last plunge.

The power has relied on high oil prices to line its own pockets and to provide subsidies and handouts to the growing number of unemployed Algerians. Bouteflika was able to buy his way out of the 2011 Arab Spring, but the fall in prices in 2014 left his coffers greatly depleted. When the Hirak protests began, he could offer neither jobs nor freebies.

Tebboune will be mindful of his former boss’s predicament as his country suffers the collateral damage of the Saudi-Russian oil war. When the epidemic is past and Hirak returns to the streets, he will face the same pressures that brought down Bouteflika, even as the power counts on him to preserve its privileges.

Lacking his predecessor’s largesse — the government will instead slash public spending by 30% — Tebboune is reduced to humbler offerings, such as tax breaks for low-wage earners and presidential pardons for some prisoners. (He’s also trying some of Bouteflika’s strong-arm tactics, such as arresting a prominent journalist.) This will satisfy neither the people nor the power.

Nor can the president hold out for any foreign-policy successes to distract from the economic hardship he must inflict on Algerians. The pandemic has forced the postponement of the Arab League summit in Algiers. Tebboune, as host, would have held the spotlight; he was also hoping to make some waves by calling for Syria’s return to the fold. Algeria’s desire to play a bigger role in resolving the civil war in Libya will also be tempered by problems closer to home.

With little else to offer, the power may, come summer, find it expedient to make a major sacrifice to appease the popular mood. Which president will it be?

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Bobby Ghosh is a columnist and member of the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. He writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus on the Middle East and the wider Islamic world.

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