-Analysis-
PARIS — It seems like a century ago, and in fact it’s a rather long way back. In early 2019, Algerians took to the streets to oppose a fifth term for then President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was so old and sick that a portrait of him was placed on the podium at his election rallies.
Bouteflika resigned under pressure from popular opinion, and his prime minister, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, was elected president. The people of Algeria continued to demand real change, but to no avail: the Hirak, the “Movement”, eventually ran out of steam. Tebboune is standing for re-election Saturday — so change will have to wait.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Returning again to 2019, but in Tunisia. The exhilaration of the 2011 revolution had given way to the disenchantment of political disorder. The only stable pillar, the democratically elected president, Beji Caïd Essebsi, dies during the summer, a few weeks before the end of his term. A little-known professor of constitutional law, Kaïs Saïed, was elected president, supported by a youthful population that no longer wanted a discredited political class. He too is a candidate for his own succession next month.
Doses of repression
What these two elections, which coincidentally fall so close together, have in common is the absence of suspense: both Tebboune, 78, and Saïed, 66, have made sure that their victories are certain. They also have in common two societies that had set themselves in motion, but are stuck now as if anesthetized.
The contexts and histories are different, but the result is the same: the forces of change have lost the match, and stagnation and even regression have prevailed. In both countries, a lack of choice and a dose of repression have turned elections into rituals played out in advance.
He’s been a member of every government for a quarter of a century
In Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune is presenting himself as the savior of a system that was on the verge of collapse at the end of the Bouteflika era. But this man has been a member of every government for a quarter of a century. He has “cleaned up” certain sectors where business dealings were too conspicuous, but without opening up the system. And his detractors are imprisoned, like the journalist Ihsane El Kadi, head of the independent website Maghreb Emergent, who was sentenced to five years in prison, a sentence that smacks of arbitrariness.
Motors of emigration
The same heavy hand is being used in Tunisia, with journalists and political opponents imprisoned. The arrest this summer of Sihem Bensedrine, a well-known figure in Tunisian civil society, was received as a warning to others.
In Tunisia, President Saïed, who was applauded by a population fed up with political chaos when he declared full powers in 2021, has failed to capitalize on this expectation of renewal. Political stagnation and economic stagnation dominate, and nobody understands where the President is taking Tunisia.
What both countries have in common is that these dashed hopes are driving young people to emigrate to Europe. A Europe that still doesn’t know how to effectively work in cooperation with the other side of the Mediterranean, beyond an illusory barrier to immigration.
Indeed, on both shores of the Mediterranean, the same lack of political and social vision prevails.
