No 'Spring' due to Islamists

Sheikh Al-Hachemi Sahnouni Algeria – Hussein Bou Saleh In an interview with Arabstoday, the former leader of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, Sheikh Al-Hachemi Sahnouni attributed the failure of Islamist parties in the latest legislative elections on May 10 due to their refusal to run under one political umbrella, "creating disunity among them". President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s National Liberation Front (FLN) took 208 of the enlarged national assembly’s 462 seats in the election, followed by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia’s National Rally for Democracy (RND) with 68 lawmakers. The moderate Islamist Green Algeria Alliance, which predicted victory ahead of the vote, won only 49 seats. Sheikh Sahnouni said: “Other parties benefited from this situation, on top of them the FLN which reaped most of the votes in the National Popular Council (the parliament)." On charges by Islamist parties that Algerian authorities had rigged the election and intentionally excluded them from competition by pulling the rug from under their feet, Hachemi said: "Rigging [elections] is possible but it was not the reason for Islamist's failure in the elections after the had high hopes following their counterparts’ victory in Arab countries, part of what is called the Arab Spring, which outbalanced the side of the Islamist stream.” Algeria's local elections will meanwhile be held on November 29 2012. The local election will be the second election to be held in Algeria in 2012 after the legislative election which took place on May 10 and resulted in dominance of the ruling party, the FLN, but the result was questioned by the Islamist opposition which claimed that the election was fraud. The legislative election was observed by an EU observatory envoy led by José Ignacio Salafranca, member of the European Parliament's foreign affairs commission, who said that "the voting process was held in calmness and integrity." Salafranca chaired a 120-men envoy from the EU. Meanwhile, the Algerian election was also observed by 200 African observers plus 132 from the Arab League. However, the Islamist parties have described the international observation over the legislative election as "cover" to the fraud carried out by the FLN.   Algeria held legislative polls in May and a presidential election is scheduled for next year that incumbent Bouteflika, is not expected to contest. While moderate Islamists in neighbouring Tunisia, Morocco and in Egypt recorded major electoral gains on the back of the Arab Spring, Algeria's legal Islamist parties lost ground in the parliamentary polls. Al-Hachemi had said it was necessary for Islamists to present a united front under one electoral list in the May vote, but some parties refused to respond to such efforts. At the forefront of refusals was the head of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), Abdallah Djaballah, and head of the Change Party Abdulmajeed Manasrah, while the Movement of Society for Peace and Al-Nahda united under the Green Algeria bloc without achieving the desired results. The former Islamic Salvation Front leader also mentioned the political stalemate in the country following the delay in announcing the government, at the same time finding the organisation of legislative elections without declaring the results to be strange. He thought the delay was due to various reasons, the most apparent, according to Sahnouni, was the health status of President Bouteflika and the lack of a clear plan from officials in the country. Responding to a question on the Arab Spring and why it "had not arrived in Algeria", Al-Hachemi Sahnouni said: “The reality of the Algerian people doesn't support an uprising like those in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and lately in Syria. The proof is that despite the protests in some vital sectors in Algeria, the demands don’t exceed social needs and do not address political reform due to people’s fear of reprisal, like the Black October riots witnessed in the country in the lead-up-to and early nineties.” Sahnouni added that “the absence of a rightful political frame is the reason for the absence of an uprising, and Algerian people’s loss of trust in its representatives is another reason for this lethargy.” Concerning the rifts in some Islamist parties on the back of ex-Minister of Public Works and leader in the Peace Society Movement Amar Al-Ghoul’s defection from the party, Sahnouni said: “Splits are no longer limited to Islamist parties but have extended to other parties like the FLN which has witnessed great split after the appearance of some reform movements calling for the discrediting its current secretary Abdelaziz Belkhadem. The source of these splits in general is personal interest, nothing more.” Conversation then moved to the reality of militant movements in Algeria following the security stranglehold imposed on them in central and eastern Algeria, as well as the militant Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) affected countries; Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania. Sahnouni said he did not deny that AQIM had been weak lately, but thought the movement can re-strengthen istelf by taking advantage of the  deteriorating economic situation and rampant unemployment among the youth. "Militants can recruit disaffected young people by wooing them with money. They may also benefit from the deteriorated security situation on the coast and in North Mali to smuggle arms across the border," he said. The veteran politician concluded with a message to the country’s politicians calling on them to pay heed to the people’s demands and leave behind personal interests, "which have caused the country to regress several years".