The Workings of the Algerian Political System Explained by Sid Ahmed Ghozali, Former Head of Government

Author: Pedro Canales
Sid Ahmed Ghozali, the driving force and mastermind behind the Algerianization of hydrocarbons, passed away very recently. He built a structure that allowed the nation, newly liberated from France in 1962 after a bloody seven-year war, to establish itself as an independent state. Throughout his long career serving Algeria, Sid Ahmed Ghozali rose to become Prime Minister at the beginning of the bloody decade of civil war in the 1990s. He can rightly be considered a prototype of the generation of builders who, starting from a devastated and decimated country, laid the foundations for a modern state.

I met Ghozali through my journalistic work in Algiers. On several of the trips I made during Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s terms as president, Sid Ahmed invited me to his home in the heights of the capital. Sitting at a table with glasses of tea and sweets typical of western Algeria, Ghozali agreed to answer my questions.

The interview I publish below is a tribute. In it, he explains in detail how Algeria works, what its mechanisms of power are, its greatness and its limits; and above all, he outlines the difficult path toward democracy and the rule of law. The country has changed in many ways, but the essentials remain. Ghozali’s lessons and warnings are relevant today.

Do you think the recent presidential elections held in April 2014 brought about change in Algeria?

No. In your country, Spain, elections represent a change, because people elect and vote. Even if it is the same government, they are a change because they are held by popular vote. In Algeria, no; they’re a mere formality. It’s not new, it’s true; but, for example, since Abdelaziz Bouteflika became president in 1999, there have been 13 elections in Algeria: 4 presidential, 3 legislative, 3 regional (wilaya), and 3 municipal. There have also been two referendums. None of them have been real elections.

Why?

Because presidents, deputies, and mayors are appointed in advance. The latter are designated through quotas. We couldn’t expect a change for the simple reason that those who appoint have not changed. In other words, the real power has not changed. For example: when there is a political change, an election, a new government is elected. The question then is: how can we expect a new government or a reshuffle to bring any change, when this one we are currently in is the 14th ministerial change? Abdelaziz Bouteflika has reshuffled the government fourteen times. These are, therefore, purely formal, artificial operations that do not reflect the reality of the balance of political forces within the country.

Don’t you think that reappointing Abdelaziz Bouteflika would indicate that the powers that be have not found a valid alternative candidate?

I don’t think so. The powers that be are doing well with this handicapped candidate, incapable of governing. It’s not that there is no alternative, because they could have appointed anyone. It’s simply that the hidden powers are doing well with Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his people, because they allow them to enrich themselves and he doesn’t cause them problems.

But there is talk that Bouteflika intends to amend the Constitution, including the position of vice president, who would be Ahmed Uyahia?

That may be so. But keep in mind that the Constitution means nothing, because the powers that be do not submit to it, do not apply it. This current one or a new one would be the same. The only sensible thing to do is to return to the 1996 Constitution, which already exists, and there’s no need to make a farce of reform. The Constitution already exists.

What is the reality of political power?

First, the reality of the country, the social reality, has not changed; and it can only be expected to change for the worse. We have a political power in Algeria that cares very little about the people’s problems. It lives locked in on itself. Its obsession is to perpetuate itself. So things on the ground are going to get increasingly difficult. The only change I see in the offing, unfortunately, is a very negative change, a change that will take place on the streets.

Are you afraid that this state of tension will explode?

It’s stronger than fear; it’s a certainty. Why? There’s a lot of talk about balance sheets, about how many kilometers of highways have been built, about how many power plants, desalination plants, and housing have been built. All of this is a smokescreen, it’s fog. We must stick to the concrete reality, which is perceptible: the Algerian state budget, the functioning of the administration, and civil servants’ expenses depend 80% on a single source of wealth: oil, which Algerian society has not created. Since the beginning of time, societies have evolved and prospered with the wealth created by humankind. Natural resources are certainly important, but they are only a support. It is humankind’s wealth that transforms it into useful wealth for society. Well, Algeria is a country that relies on imports, since society produces nothing, due to the poor health of its institutions and government. Well, 98% of those imports are paid for by oil.

For comparison…

Okay. Compare it to Spain. It’s a very old country, which produces wealth every day, and yet is experiencing enormous difficulties due to the economic crisis in closing its budget. Imagine then your southern neighbor, Algeria, which produces nothing and lives off the only resource it hasn’t created, which is oil. The main wealth, human wealth, is completely sterilized. Where are the Algerian companies? Where are the leading companies? Nothing. We live off imports. We have abolished public monopolies and transformed them into private monopolies, and that’s where the parasites hide, living off the percentages they take from imports. Where are the exports? Nothing; we don’t export anything. We even import the essentials of our food, a good portion of the wheat we consume, all the machinery, all the automobiles. Algeria is the largest importer of wheat in the world per capita. Throughout its history, Algeria has always been a supplier of wheat, as during the Roman Empire and even during the French colonial period. There’s an anecdote that the French landed in Algeria in 1830 as a result of a contemptuous gesture by the Dey of Algiers to a French diplomat over a wheat bill that France hadn’t paid to Algeria. Remember that Emir Abdelkader, who was at war with the French, imported weapons and paid for them with wheat. Algeria produced that wheat.

And today…

Look at the leap Algeria has made from the colonial period and independence to today, when we depend on foreign sources for essentials of our daily lives. And that can’t last. It’s not because the Algerian people are genetically stupid and lazy, no. Someone is responsible for all of this: the institutions are totally incapable of helping Algerians individually and collectively unleash their wealth-creating capabilities.

Your forecasts in numbers…?

As long as we don’t see a thousand small and medium-sized businesses being created every day in Algeria, there will be no change. It’s businesses that create wealth, and they are the ones we must support. And that’s not what the government is doing. The government supports parasitism, corruption, and waste, but it doesn’t support Algerian businesses. There are no more than 50,000 businesses in the entire country that truly qualify as such.

I see that you’ve hardened your political language toward the regime. Are you disappointed by all these years of Bouteflika?

I’m not disappointed by Bouteflika, since I denounced him from the beginning, I opposed his candidacy for President from the very beginning. And that’s because I knew him before, I knew his capabilities. So there’s no room for disappointment. What I’m saying is that, unfortunately, I was right. But at the same time, I don’t fall into the trap of reducing Algeria’s problem to Bouteflika himself. Algeria’s problem is not Abdelaziz Bouteflika. It’s one of the problems, but not the problem. Because it’s true that having an elderly, sick, and disabled person as head of the country is a problem. I wish him well, but I still say he’s not capable of leading the country. And that’s not just from last year; this has been going on since at least 2007, when he went to Paris for treatment for the first time. We mustn’t be mistaken in our analysis: if the problem were Bouteflika, it would be enough to replace him and we’d solve the problem. Well, no, unfortunately, that’s not the case.

What, then, is the problem?

The problem is the entire system, which is bad. Not in the polemical sense of the term. Our Algerian political system is based on three fundamental errors, which I call the three deadly sins. The first is one of conception. The system operates on the basis of disrespect for the law. This is the first sin: the system does not respect the laws it itself dictates. There are thousands of examples in everyday life. Second, the system totally disregards society. This is not a subjective disregard, but rather a disregard for the role society plays in development. A society does not function based on orders, as if it were a flock of sheep or cows. They are human beings, with heads, who have blood, brains, feelings, and souls, and they do not function by giving them orders. And this is precisely the system’s inner conviction: society is made to obey, whether civil or military. That’s how it thinks. This is the second deadly sin. You know very well that in the modern world, no policy is applicable without the active participation of society. And participation rests on conviction. The population is never asked for its opinion on this or that policy, never.

And the third sin?

It’s lack of responsibility. Those who make decisions at all levels are never responsible, they are not accountable. Whether the Head of State, the Head of a company, the Head of an army, or the Head of a family, if they are not accountable, they are doomed to make bad decisions. Any leader or person in charge, if they know their mistakes won’t fall on them, is doomed to make them. A business leader has to be accountable to the market; if not, they go bankrupt. If they don’t make a profit, they go bankrupt. They can’t recruit just anyone, make whatever decisions they want, because their company will collapse. It’s the same at the political level.

And what happens at the political level?

Well, decisions are made and never accountable to anyone. It’s Freudian; there’s a transposition there. When you believe in God, only God is above responsibility; He makes decisions, demands accountability, but never gives accountability. These people behave toward the country as if they were gods: they make decisions, demand accountability, but never give accountability. That’s why I don’t think my opinion on this is harsh; it’s obvious. And even though they forbid me from speaking, it’s the truth. Neither the deputies, nor the senators, nor the ministers, nor anyone, is accountable to the voters. And the President, of course, isn’t either. But those who aren’t accountable are those who are in the shadows.

Where does this lead us?

This is the Algerian reality, which one day or another will take revenge, its revenge. It’s often said that facts are stubborn. And what these people haven’t understood is that facts are not like individuals. They can impose themselves on individuals who have nothing, who have nothing to hold on to, indefinitely. Until the moment the facts prevail, and there’s nothing you can do about that. You can’t go against the grain of facts, of Nature, of natural laws.

That makes you appear pessimistic…

I’m not a pessimist. Because I’m aware that Algeria’s capabilities are enormous, considerable. What arouses my anger is seeing the extent to which these capabilities are underexploited. When we look at the progress Algeria has made since independence, it’s considerable. I lived through the period when there were only about half a thousand higher education students. It was the time of French colonization. Today there are more than a million students. In 1962, there were 300,000 children enrolled in school, 5% of whom were girls; today there are more than nine million enrolled, more than 50% of whom are women. Despite all the mistakes we rulers have made, there is an immense human force that is there, but it is sterilized. What good is so much wealth if it’s unused, if it’s outdated, if it’s prevented from expressing itself in everyday life? The population is prevented from expressing itself in industrial and economic life. Why? Because of the sins I just mentioned: a contemptuous attitude toward society, a scandalous underestimation of its role in the life of a nation; a failure to respect the law; and a lack of responsibility on the part of leaders.

What, then, is Algeria’s real problem?

They refuse to change the system. As an example, I’ll remind you of a statement Bouteflika made to French journalist Jean Pierre Elkabbach twelve years ago. That was before he ran for a second term in 2004. The journalist asked him if he was going to run for a second term. Abdelaziz Bouteflika thought for ten seconds and said: “I don’t know how to do anything else.” You have a figure who appears before the population and says: I want to be your president because I don’t know how to do anything else. This characterizes the Algerian system well. Generally, when someone runs for president of a country, they say: I want to be president because I want to do this and that, this program, implement these measures. Because I know how to do it, and I think I’m better than the others. But it’s not said: I’m a candidate because I don’t know how to do anything else. In Algeria, there is a personalization of power, which necessarily translates into a total forgetfulness and disinterest in the issues that concern Algerians, both in the present and in the future. And be careful: the silence of Algerians, their muteness, should not be considered a sign of approval. Far from it. At most, it can be considered abandonment, a resignation while waiting for better times. But the awakening will be hard, very hard.

Why?

Because the State ends up forgetting that nothing is given for free, and that the day the crisis erupts, there will be accountability. Algerians must be re-inured to effort, to sweat. And in one way or another, the system always works to contaminate society. Because it is the system that is corrupt.

Who holds the keys to this system that chains society?

It is anonymous, faceless. It is the hidden government, that is, a government that is hidden. The official government of Mr. Abdelmalek Sellal is the government designated by law. That’s how it appears. But in reality, the government is hidden, genetically hidden. And this is to avoid accountability. If a mistake is made, it is precisely the person who committed it who is responsible. This is not the case with the system that governs Algeria. They don’t want those responsible, or accountability. The anonymous government is an oligarchy. Members change over time, but the oligarchy remains. For example, the famous qualification survey is still in place…

What does it consist of?

That’s it. For any appointment to be made, whatever it may be, in the Army, in the services, in the Administration, in the Government, in the diplomatic corps, in all areas, there must be a qualification certificate, which is a simple sheet of paper that goes on the candidate’s resume. This certificate is issued by the Secret Services, and at all levels. But it is not signed by anyone. Which means that when that person fails in their duties, or commits a crime, or is prosecuted by the courts, or is dismissed from their position, no one asks the person who issued the certificate of qualification why they did it. They, that power in the shadows, are never held accountable; no one can accuse them. People demand the head of this or that minister, the head of government, or any deputy, but no one holds those who have given them the placet accountable.

This system is a bit absurd, isn’t it?

Because you are situated in a context that is yours, but not ours. The head of government in Spain is the boss, the one who has his powers, the one who has the right to make decisions, and the one who must be accountable for them. That’s why it’s important in your case to know who the head of government is. But in Algeria, it’s not like that. The head of government has that title, but not in reality; he’s not the one who leads. If he’s not the one who leads, it matters little to know whether the head of government is this or that person. Those who truly rule are in the shadows, and they don’t even appear to be those who rule. It’s satanic as a system, but it’s the truth.

Where is the heart of this system located?

Especially within the Secret Services, and in other strata that represent the military, employers, and financiers. But it doesn’t depend on individuals. I’m going to tell you something that will surprise you: Ahmed Gaid Salah is not part of the hidden power; he is not among those who decide. Others have elected him. But the system reproduces itself. Remember that when figures like Generals Mohamed Lamari, Khaled Nezzar, and Smain Lamari died or disappeared from power, it was believed that a change would occur, and there wasn’t. Nothing changed. The system renews itself and perpetuates itself.

Does that apply to the changes that have taken place in the services in the last year?

Exactly the same. They’ve removed Athmane Tartag and Mehenna Djebar, and nothing has happened. They’ve been replaced, and everything continues as before. There’s a certain redistribution of functions that had been planned since the 1990s and had been postponed. Bouteflika has nothing to do with the changes; he’s not the one in charge.

What if General Mohamed Mediène falls tomorrow?

The same. He’ll fall because he’s sick, but nothing will happen. The hidden power within the services is much deeper. However, there is a new fact: more and more officers in the Armed Forces are being renewed and want to have a voice. There’s an internal movement within the Armed Forces that could hold surprises.

Would that explain the calls for a virtual rebellion by several former generals?

I think they misjudged the situation and thought that, given the debate over whether there would be a fourth term or not, it was time to intervene. But that wasn’t the case. Now, notice that the powers that be haven’t taken them to court, haven’t punished them, despite their calls for insubordination.

And is this perverse system accepted by Algeria’s Western partners?

This is the problem we have with the West. The United States and the European Union are not our enemies; they defend their interests. When a representative of a Western country comes to Algeria, they do so to defend their country’s interests, which is legitimate. The problem is that that country deceives itself about its interests in Algeria. Instead of seeing us as a potential force, capable of exchanging hundreds of millions of euros with them instead of a hundred million, what they are interested in is striking blows: obtaining this contract, that contract for the benefit of this or that society, and not for the benefit of the nation they represent. Since they are mistaken in this perception, what they are doing is being complacent with the existing power in Algeria.

Does this apply to Spain?

Naturally. To Spain or to any of the 26 European states. And I also tell you that they are in contradiction with their own laws, that they do not respect the agreements they have signed with us. The agreements that the European Union signed with the Maghreb countries in the 1990s, since the Barcelona Conference, stipulate the following in Article 2: respect for the rule of law is a pillar of these agreements. The countries of the South violate this agreement, and the countries of the North do not tell them that they have to respect it. This is a mistaken view on the part of our European partners. Because European governments, Spanish and others, are obsessed with the short term, with the upcoming elections. Their policies within their own countries often give in to the temptation of short-termism. And this is what generates so much tension. Because leaders are rare who are willing to sacrifice and undertake long-term action, not even in their relations with us.

A concrete example…

Emigration-immigration. There are two ways to deal with this phenomenon. One is based on a long-term vision, which consists of considering a region like the Maghreb, which is four times larger in area than the European countries bordering the Mediterranean; but twice as large in population. Therefore, if I, the North, work with these countries, the South, to provide food and necessities not to the 100 million they are, but to the 300 million of us combined, the South and North, the migration problem will be solved. There will be no need to build walls. That is the long-term vision, which takes 30 years. But 30 years in the life of a nation is nothing. It would be enough to have leaders on both shores with a long-term vision for the problem to be resolved. That is the only way to solve it thoroughly. Instead, short-term solutions are prioritized: closing borders, building walls, entrusting southern countries with the role of gendarmes, etc. That’s why I tell you that the northern countries are mistaken about their interests.

What did the Barcelona Process mean?

The Barcelona Conference was born as a response to the security problems in the Mediterranean. And it was the Europeans who wrote in stone the paradigm that remains valid to this day: security in the Mediterranean is not achievable without development; development is not achievable without good governance; and there can be no good governance without the rule of law. It was the Europeans themselves who wrote it in Barcelona. I share it one hundred percent. But they have forgotten it since then. When we asked the Europeans why they could allow what Zine Ben Ali was doing in Tunisia, they would say: yes, but Tunisia is a good student; it implements the agreements signed on the fight against terrorism. It’s true, they said, we see he’s a dictator, but we must help him move towards democracy without being harsh. We in Algeria also made profound mistakes, like the single-party system. We thought that the single party was protection, a guarantee of security for the people. Well, it was a disastrous election, and we are paying the price for that historic mistake. Spain had a historic opportunity with the Transition, but that’s not what happens in countries moving from dictatorship to democracy, like the Arab countries. We can even consider Spain’s situation an exception. Although it’s true that it had previously paid for it with the Civil War.

What’s happening with the democratic movements in Algeria?

Well, we are doubly penalized, by the local despotism itself and by the complacency of Western countries toward the Algerian regime. I’ll give you another example: the visit of Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García Margallo to Algeria in the middle of the election campaign in April happened because there was a contract behind it. A contract Spain didn’t want to lose. And to achieve this, the Spanish government agreed to give false testimony. It knew the elections were being manipulated and came to give its approval. Why? Because there were short-term interests behind it. And that doesn’t benefit either the Spanish or the Algerian people.

Don’t you see some kind of Spanish-style transition in Algeria, should the opposition manage to unify?

There is no opposition in Algeria. You can’t speak of an opposition in a country where it is banned. Apart from the Democratic Front party, which is banned, the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS), which has existed since 1963, or the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), apart from these three parties, there is no opposition in Algeria. All the other parties are in the hands of the system, which is busy casting the roles like a film audition. There is a distribution of roles: you play the role of a nationalist party, you play the role of a democratic party, you play the role of an Islamist party. And we have even had the luxury of having a Trotskyist party (Luisa Hanoun’s Workers’ Party), which is a party that belongs entirely to the services, but which plays the role of a Trotskyist party. There is no opposition because either you submit (and in this case, you can’t talk about an opposition when one agrees to submit), or if you don’t submit, you are banned from any activity. The opposition must have a statute, a role, official recognition, and respect for the role of the opposition. We shouldn’t expect such an “opposition” to make the transition, because it doesn’t exist. Power is even vicious when it uses this argument. When asked why it doesn’t alternate with the opposition, it responds: “And where is the opposition?” It begins by banning it and ends by saying, “But where do you see the opposition?”

And your party?

The Democratic Front has been banned from activity for fourteen years. Well, three weeks before the May 2012 legislative elections, sixty parties were created. Sixty parties that submitted their legalization papers 13 years after the Democratic Front, and were accepted within a week. They are virtual particles manufactured for show. What’s more, there is a deliberate desire to discredit the Democratic Front party in the eyes of the population. But people have no idea what a political party does because they’ve never seen one. They see dozens of parties that represent nothing, that are useless. This is a deliberate desire on the part of the system to destroy the concept of credibility of what a political party is.

During this entire period, was there never a possibility of change?

If this possibility of change had existed, the authorities would have taken the initiative first to open the political field, to consult, and to organize a transition period. But when the authorities themselves oppose any transition, there is nothing to be done. Spain is a neighbor of Morocco, and it is a neighbor of Algeria. But these are entirely different situations.

Why?

The life of a nation is a permanent negotiation between society and political power. This is how we move forward. Give and take. But there can be no negotiation without mutual recognition. Let’s take the example of Morocco. It has never had this problem because of a colonial system completely different from Algeria’s, and because of the recognition of the historical legitimacy of the power that is the monarchy. The Moroccan people, as a rule, view the Moroccan monarchy as legitimate; they don’t question it. This doesn’t stop them from being dissatisfied and demanding from the monarchy: I want this, this, and this. The monarch, for his part, cannot ignore the population because he knows that if he crosses a certain threshold, he will be expelled. If he finds himself delegitimized in the eyes of the population, his life is at stake. There is therefore a de facto mutual recognition: you recognize me as a leader, I recognize you as a society that has problems and wants to solve them. There is, therefore, room for negotiation.

Isn’t that the case in Algeria?

Precisely. Because when in a negotiation each party demands the disappearance of the other, the non-recognition of the other, as is the case in Algeria, there is no negotiation possible. Power does not recognize the people’s participatory role, and the people, for their part, have long considered power as an adversary, as not their friend, as having no interest in them. Therefore, there is no room for negotiation here. This means that, by rejecting orderly change, we expose ourselves increasingly to disorderly change, violent change. And this is the worst of changes.

Don’t you rule out this possibility?

I don’t rule it out. It’s even possible that there could be a coup d’état, a military-led coup, which you don’t know about and which I don’t know about. It wouldn’t be the worst of solutions, although it wouldn’t be the best either. Because if there is a coup d’état, even with good intentions, we return to an authoritarian regime of who knows how many decades, which we have already experienced.

Do you admit the possibility of a justified military coup, a pronouncement?

Yes, there could be. A movement that seeks to stem the widespread corruption within the system. Remember 1969 when Muammar Gaddafi and his junior officers overthrew the monarchy of the Al Senussi dynasty, King Idris I. It seemed like they had good intentions then, but look how it ended. This is why the rejection of change is the best guarantee of destabilization in the country. Ironically, this regime has played on the following premise: I am stability; outside of me is destabilization. Well, it is precisely the regime in Algeria that is the source of destabilization. In other words, the greatest disruptor is Power itself, which demands stability and pretends to be its sole guarantor.

There have been other examples of this around the world…

Yes. This is what was emerging in the George Bush era, when the United States, with its vast resources, subordinated its legitimacy to playing the role of stabilizer around the world. And look at what happened under Bush: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and everything that’s happening today. And I don’t know if Barack Obama is going down the same path; we’ll have to see. When a country plays this role, it ends up being the main troublemaker. What they’ve done in Iraq, in Iran, what they’re doing in Ukraine.

All this confuses the Algerian equation, doesn’t it?

Yes, it appears extremely difficult, even more so because it has been altered by the fact that we have had enormous financial resources, which we have thrown out the window and with which we have hidden many problems. But when there is no more money, which will inevitably happen, then we will be faced with the unknown. That’s the great unknown.

Has there been so much waste?

And more. Note that George Bush’s election campaign cost $300 million, and the stakes were high. Well, Algeria, a country ten times smaller than the United States and with a negligible GDP compared to the United States, spent as much as the United States on an election campaign in which it was already known in advance who would be elected.

That doesn’t mean that Algeria doesn’t have a large financial surplus…

It’s an illusion. That surplus exists because Algeria doesn’t invest in the country’s needs. If the government implemented the investment plan it has had to implement for fifteen years and hasn’t, there would be no financial surplus.

How much has Algeria earned from its hydrocarbon exports?

Since independence, we’ve earned profits worth a trillion dollars (1,000,000,000,000), minus spending; that’s been going on for 52 years. Well, in the last 15 years, Bouteflika’s years, the profits have been $800 billion. Where are they? Nobody knows. Considering investments in infrastructure, we could have spent at most $200 billion. Where’s the rest? Someday they’ll have to account for this.

Well, there are judicial investigations underway on corruption matters…

What investigations! The only ones there are are those issued outside of Algeria, in Italy, Canada, the United States. There’s nothing here, and there won’t be anything. The authorities will be forced to admit that the investigations of foreign judges are true and will have to rule. But you’ll find some procedural flaw, some unverified information, some insufficient statement, etc., and you’ll end up annulling the trials. Don’t be under any illusions: Chakib Jelil will never go to jail. Because behind him are the President’s associates, his brother, his advisors, his investors.

What do you think of the Front formed by the parties that called for the electoral boycott?

It’s part of the system’s political game. They won’t go very far. Ali Benflis himself, who threatened to file a complaint in the street, backed down and simply wants to be a tolerated opponent.

And what about the National Alliance for Change, signed by prominent figures, including members of the FIS?

This, on the other hand, is more interesting. I’m in contact with all of them, I know them, and we talk often. Not only with Murad Dhina and Anuar Haddam, but with the other FIS leaders in Algeria, such as Ali Djeddi and Kamel Guemazzi, who have agreed to speak with the Front you mentioned.

What does the FIS want?

For now, it legitimately wants to be allowed to intervene, to make itself known, to speak with a new message. They are gradually gaining credibility. But what is more important, and we agree on this, is that without the intervention of civil society, no significant change can be made. The system must be faced with the dilemma of change. And this can only be done on the streets, by joining movements like the Barakat Movement, the Algerian League for Human Rights (LADH), and the autonomous unions. They are not political parties, but they are part of the political solution.

Translated from Spanish.