In this podcast, Arezki Daoud of MEA Risk provides an update on the state of the stalled political transition in Algeria. Transcript: Rough times in Algeria as the military command pushes for more instability By Arezki Daoud - 18 June 2019: The deconstruction of the Algerian regime of the past two decades is underway. At least the public figures who were tasked to administer the country for more than 20 years are now being investigated by judicial authorities that appear rejuvenated but too fast. The arrests under detention warrant rules of two former prime ministers, Ahmed Ouyahia and Abdelmalek Sellal, as well as many other senior political and business figures, did not come as a surprise. The arrests are just an extension of the earlier arrests of the brother of now ousted President Bouteflika and the two most senior Intelligence Chiefs, Generals Toufik Mediene and Bachir Tartag. The three were allegedly plotting to save the Bouteflika system by reportedly illegally planning the formation of a future presidential system that would replace that of Abdelaziz Bouteflika and would have save the furniture, so to speak. But pressure from the street has forced the army command to get involved, in particular after its Chief, General Gaid Salah was threatened to be dismissed by a plot from the trio that I just mentioned. Gaid Salah sent several public warnings to the three men and others who were with them, but eventually he had to resort to arresting them. You have to know that the three men who are in a military prison nowadays were not only central to the bankrupt Algerian regime of cronyism and outright terror, but they are ultimately the ones who built a nationwide bureaucratic and support system that kept Algeria completely locked down. They created a system that the Moroccans call el-Makhzen, when they describe their own system of cronyism. In Algeria, they put that system at the mercy of oligarch friends who carved out Algeria as a huge cake just for them to eat, and handsomely reward their facilitators. The central administration, including the justice and police authorities were in the hands of their men, from ex-Prime Ministers Ouyahia and Sellal, to minister of justice Louh, to former Prime Minister Bedoui, who was interior minister, and dozens of others who now facing justice, others, like Bedoui, are still in power. Below that, they created provincial and local authorities that gave allegiance and loyalty to them and them only. All bureaucracies from there on were built to constrain any social and economic improvement for the population, but in fact they were used to keep the simple folks busy with paperwork, red tape, and corruption at all levels. Now with the Algerian people taking to the street since 22 February, the system lost its balance. No one predicted the intensity of the public response to the system wanting to impose Bouteflika for a fifth term. At MEA Risk, we knew that 2019 was going to be a major year for Algeria, specifically because the country’s leaders, chief of whom Prime Minister Ouyahia, promised the removal of subsidies as the country was about to lose all of its foreign currency reserves. All of that was taking place inside a completely broken economy, and in an election year. Two-to-three years ago, it was easy for our analysts to warn that something will happen in 2019. But not the magnitude. Everyone thought the people were just afraid of expressing themselves with that degree of passion. We were wrong. Now the pandora’s box is open and putting the genie back in the bottle is just impossible. In a moment of panic, the Bouteflika system collapsed, and the military had no other option but to be part of the cleanup process. The rest we know: those who can inflict the hardest damage were picked up first… think of the three men I mentioned earlier, Said Bouteflika and the two generals. Then the focus was on the oligarchs, who were handled by lower courts.
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