The Arab World was rocked by protests in 2011, starting in Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution and followed by major upheavals in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Syria, in what became as the Arab Spring. Freedom, democracy, good governance and better quality of life were the demands, and results ranged from revolutions to suppressions and full-scale armed conflicts.
Some dictatorships withstood the protest wave, but didn't survive in the next (or Second) Arab Spring which peak was in 2019, rocking Algeria, Sudan, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Despite gains for the people, the general ending of the democracy movements were not in their favour. I will be discussing events in two countries I will talk about for the first time, both neighbouring each other and are being neglected by the international community.
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Abdelaziz Bouteflika served as President of Algeria from 1999, and his rule was marred by corruption and rights abuses. He survived a series of protests during the Arab Spring, but stroke struck him in 2013, necessitating regular medical trips to Europe and disappearing from public view.
Even so, he planned to have his fifth term in the 2019 elections, against popular will, leading to the "Hirak" movement that started on 16 February 2019. He subsequently rescinded his plan, and the Algerian military compelled him to resign, doing so on 02 April the same year. This marked as a victory for the Algerian people, but le pouvoir (French for "the power"; i.e., the Algerian establishment) remained, so did Hirak whose goal was to remove it. The elections were originally scheduled on 18 April, but as Bouteflika stepped down, the polls were moved to 04 July, only to be postponed further as the country's Constitution Country deemed organising these "impossible". 12 December became the final date, but the Hirak had mistrust with the process, declaring an election boycott during the anniversary of the start of the War of Independence from France on 01 November.
Official turnout was below 40%; the opposition Rally for recorded an even lower rate: 8%. In either way, it didn't reach a majority of the electorate. Abdelmajid Taboun (Abdelmadjid Tabboune), Bouteflika's housing minister and later short-time prime minister after the president's resignation, was "elected" president. He publicly honoured Hirak on 22 February 2020, during the anniversary of its first major protests, and "made a personal commitment to carry out all of its demands". As the saying goes, "promises are made to be broken"-- using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover, Taboun banned public demonstrations of any cause, leading to arrests of journalists and protesters.The National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees (CNLD) recorded around 70 of which being prisoners of conscience as of 02 July 2020, many due to their posts on Facebook critical of the regime. The epidemic continued, the Algerian healthcare system was deteriorating, but military influence still stood, so the second anniversary of Hirak was marked by mass protests.
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Unlike Algeria whose leader Bouteflika was deposed in 2019, neighbouring Tunisia in its northeast is the Arab Spring's birthplace. Since the ouster of Zayn al-Abidin bin Ali (Zine el-Abidine ben Ali), the country had a democratic window, albeit unstable, and the social conservative leader Qais Sayyid (Kais Saied), who was elected in 2019, closed these openings for the civil society to breathe.
A new kind of governance is what Sayyid favours, as Tunisia is pestered by corruption and other mismanagement issues. He got the support of an-Nahda (Ennahda; "Renaissance"), the biggest bloc in Parliament, and after a political crisis in 2020 he appointed Hisham al-Mashishi (Hichem Mechichi) as Prime Minister, but he became at odds with them concerning their interpretations of each other's duties. This rift contributed in mishandling the COVID-19 epidemic that was ravaging the country, and Mashishi resisted calls for resignation, which were growing louder along with those for the dissolution of Parliament.
Sayyid terminated Mashishi, granted the dissolution wishes, and removed parliamentarians' immunity on 25 July 2021. Public reception was mixed, but many welcomed his decision, only for them to encounter the horrifying new kind of governance: on 22 September 2021, Sayyid declared he will rule by decree and expressed carelessness in violating parts of the Constitution which he was to ignore; in the same month he signed Decree 54, a misinformation decree used to crack down against criticisms even on Facebook. Judicial independence collapsed as he dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council on 06 February 2022.
The Sayyid regime rounded critics and high-profile political figures up; some of them (some sentenced) include former prime ministers Hamadi Jebali, Mehdi Jomaa, Youssef Shahed (Chahed) and Elyes Fakhfakh, former president Munsif al-Marzuki (Moncef Marzouki), an-Nahda leader Rashid al-Ghannushi (Rachid Ghannouchi), Yassin Ayari, Saifaddin (Seifeddine) Makhlouf, Noureddine el-Beheiry, Abir Moussi, Mehdi Zagrouba and Said Ferjani. Ferjani's daughter Kaouther called for the United Kingdom, where they were based, to act to have him released, but her demand is falling on deaf ears.
The regime also held a constitutional referendum in 2022 and a parliamentary election in 2022-2023; turnouts not passing 35% indicate its infamy.
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Elections in Algeria were usually held in December; this time the Taboun regime scheduled it on 07 September 2024, to the public confusion. Suffering in an unfavourable and repressive political environment, his opposition deemed the polls a "rubber stamp" exercise and rejected "electoral charades under a dictatorship" in a letter of 11 high-profile figures boycotting the election. Their counterparts in Tunisia, experiencing the same harshness, have the same decision on the Saied regime's polls schedule 29 days after its neighbours-- 06 October. The international community is preoccupied by the many crises it faces, and these two despots add to the headache. The West is not so compelled even by them cosying up with Putin and Xi; this timidity should change, because Algerians and Tunisians are suffocating.
Article posted on 05 September 2024, 18:22 (UTC +08:00).
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