Chadli's headache
HE! MOiNS FORT QUAND JE PARLE!!! 'Shut up, I'm talking!" THE SUDDEN explosion of popular anger in the streets of Algerian cities has shaken the Algerian ruling autocracy out its roots. For the last 26 years, basking in the glory of the onemillion martyrs of the Algerian revolution, the ruling FLN has steered with an iron fist the young republic towards a "brave new world' - a socialism 'à l'algérienne' which dazzled a whole generation of muddle-headed western revolutionaries into thinking that it was 1917 all over again!
A quarter of a century later, the FLN is still hanging on to power although its "socialism' is in deep trouble. The 'socialism" miracle was nothing but a mirage on paper.
Vast prestige projects, particularly in steel and petrochemicals, engulfed massive investments but remain semi-paralysed by the huge bloated state bureaucracy, Agriculture, based on state farms established in the richest farmlands expropriated from the French colonys can barely deliver one third of the country's needs. Ninety-five per cent of the country's income comes from oil revenue, and with the drop in price, Algeria not only lost 40 per cent of its state revenue but had no alternative but to start building up a huge foreign debt. With the economy in tatters, the only viable
- the parallel market -flourishes for the benefit of the racketeering nomenklatura tied to the state bureaucracy and the ruling party. Symptoms of
U CP DA economies in ruin are always the same: inflation, shortage of food, corruption, soaring unemployment that sooner or later lead to social tensions and explosions.
It is no surprise that President Chadli's panacea was to reverse gearand Thatcherise the economy: austerity, cuts and privatisation of the huge state sector. For the first time since the revolution, state enterprises instructed to make profits have started making redundancies. Even the symbol of the collectivist state - the Ministry of Planning - was abolished in November 1987.
Chadli began his "reforms' quietly in 1986 when he put his strategic vision, the 'national charter', to a referendum which he won overwhelmingly. To put his charter into motion, Chadli set his eyes in winning the support of the FLN congress taking place this December which not only decides the main economic orientations for the next five years but also appoints its general secretary to be the single candidate to the next presidential election in early 1989.
Chadli saw himself as the only contender for another term of office with complete free rein on the main strategic choices. He took no notice of the Algerian working class which he knew was demoralised by 26 years of the political desert and saddled with an amorphous state trade union -the UGTA - whose only role was to prevent workers from acting to defend their interests. This time, however, workers were for the first time confronted with redundancies, wage freeze and a sharp fall
Algeria
in their standard of living. Sections of the FLN, with their sympathising wing in the UGTA, who are hostile to Chadli's liberalisation plans were keen to see some unrest developing, but only sufficient to put them into a better bargaining position. They quickly gave support and encouraged the first wave of strikes by car workers at the Ruiba-Reghaia heavy vehicle factory (Berliet). Having made their point, they started ushering carworkers back to work when disaster struck. Post-office workers came out on October 2nd and called for a general strike. Two days later, the first skirmishes between unemployed and student youth and the police transformed the situation. Soon the rebellion embraced the whole country. Street riots spread to Blida, Mostaganem, Oran, Constantine and even Annaba - Chadli's home town.
Whether emulating the less recent bread riots in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, or the intifada in Palestine, Algerian youth vented their anger on every symbol of opulence and state corruption. Luxury shops, town halls, police stations, government offices, state supermarkets - Galleries Algerienne, Souk al Fallah -Mouhafdahs (FLN district offices) went up in smoke. Chadli knew that he had to stop this from becoming a general conflagration and he ordered the army to nip it in the bud. Riot police, gendarmerie, paratroopers, tanks, and helicopter gunships confronted the demonstrators leaving a trail of dead and wounded. Few Algerians believed their people's army capable of such a ruthless bloodbath.
Having quashed the revolt, Chadli addressed the nation and proposed constitutional reforms as if they were a concession. His real agenda was to defuse the situation and start reoccupying political positions from his adversaries. Soon after his speech, thousands of civil rights activists, trade unionists, and politicians were rounded up and will be tried as rioting hooligans. At the same time, state supermarkets were flooded with luxury goods and food never seen on shelves for several years.
To what extent the popular explosion has shifted the balance of forces before the next FLN congress remain to be seen. What is certain is the sudden confident mobilisation of the working class which belied all those who have denied that it could play a role anymore in the political life of the country.
What is also certain is that the crisis of a state capitalist class, perhaps the most developed in the Arab world, will open a new chapter in the demise of Arab nationalism. Whether Chadli survives with the help of a much more naked military dictatorship and/or in alliance with the fundamentalists, will not resolve the long term problem of a decaying state capitalism.
Only the Algerian working class can resolve them. For this, an Algerian Solidarnose is still to be built.
Jim Boumelha