Protesters in Algeria use nonviolence to seek real political change
(2019) , 5 pages
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- Authors
Djelloul, Ghaliya 
- Abstract
- Until Monday, March 11, it was the people of Algeria against the country’s 82-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. He has been in power since 1999, and the state news agency announced in February that he would run for an unprecedented fifth term, and this despite his poor health and the country’s deep economic crisis. Previously there had been little public opposition to the seemingly endless reign of the country’s “phantom president”, but this time protests erupted and grew. Despite efforts to intimidate protestors with dark threats of a “Syrian scenario” – civil war – in the end, the government blinked: On March 11 Bouteflika announced he would no longer seek a fifth term, adding somewhat enigmatically, “for me there has never been any question of it”. Across the nation, the feeling that the 57-year-old regime’s grip on power may finally be slipping. So far, the protesters’ strategy has been resolutely nonviolent. They have even made peaceful gestures toward the police and expressed their civic responsibility in unexpected ways, including cleaning the streets after demonstrations. By resisting political pressure and fatalism through nonviolence, everyday citizens are seeking to change how power may be exercised in Algeria, peacefully yet insistently calling on the government to allow dissent and listen to what its people have to say. Real dialogue, they say, is the only way to restore the legitimacy of Algeria’s government in the eyes of its people. Will peaceful protest be enough to shift the balance of power in Algeria? The future of the movement is uncertain, but the possibility of a fifth term for Bouteflika already belongs to the past.
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Citations
Djelloul, G. (2019). Protesters in Algeria use nonviolence to seek real political change (The Conversation UK). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/95514