See: Al-CIA-Duh Reborn in Algeria
Consider that the primary.
"Algeria leader reelected in landslide" Associated Press April 19, 2014
ALGIERS — Algeria’s frail president won a fourth term in a landslide, but it masks a bigger question for this oil-rich North African nation — what now? It is unclear who will succeed the 77-year-old leader, who has been in power since 1999, and deal with an emboldened opposition.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had a stroke last year, won a staggering 81 percent of the vote in Thursday’s election despite not appearing in his own campaign.
If it looks like, walks like, and quacks like, it's a rigged election. The exception in the world today is one that is not.
His main opponent, former prime minister Ali Benflis, has responded by crying foul and promising to create a political party to unite the opposition against a system he calls rotten and a leader he believes is no longer capable of ruling.
‘‘Algeria will now be run by proxy, a singular situation that puts the security of the country in danger,’’ he told supporters Friday after it was announced he had won just 12 percent of the vote. ‘‘Not even Stalin received such scores.’’
Algerian hyperbole. Stalin was the only one on the ballot, and it was off to the slave labor camps if you turned in a blank ballot.
Algeria is a young nation with 80 percent of its 37 million people under the age of 45. There are thousands of small demonstrations every year by people demanding more jobs and housing that the regime has been able to placate for now with generous oil-funded handouts.
But with oil running out, a new system of engaging with the populace is needed.
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Related: Can Algeria escape a vicious, violent past?
Didn't happen, and what you notice about the paper of elite interests is they cover elections and that's about it in so many places. The class the paper is written by and for wants to know who they will have to deal with in said nation. That's why it gets the outsized coverage when its election time.
"Algerian election faces disaffected populace" by Paul Schemm | Associated Press April 17, 2014
ALGIERS — The students playing pick-up soccer amid the faded grandeur of Algiers’ sweeping waterfront say they won’t be voting in Thursday’s presidential elections, echoing the sentiments of many young Algerians.
They want jobs and housing when they graduate from college and lack loyalty to a political system run by an aging man too frail to show up for a single campaign event.
Boycotting is the main form of protest against an election that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 77, is expected to win — despite his glaring absence — because powerful state institutions are wedded to maintaining Algeria’s status quo. But dissatisfaction in this country, a key energy producer and US ally in the fight against terrorism, is growing. Algeria’s sclerotic political system does little to include the 80 percent of the population of 37 million who are under the age of 45.
‘‘After we finish our studies there’s only unemployment, and you need connections to get to work,’’ said Redouane Baba Abdi. ‘‘Most people don’t want Bouteflika for a fourth term. He’s like the walking dead.’’
And yet he won in a landslide (a theme that will be developed later today in a different way).
The complaints sound like those of U.S college graduates.
In the three-week campaign, Bouteflika left it to ministers and close associates to rally interest in his reelection. Since a stroke last year left him speaking and walking with difficulty, he has limited himself to scripted TV appearances with foreign visitors like Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month.
That's why Kerry went there. To check on the status of the vote rigging.
Bouteflika changed the constitution in 2008 so he could remain president, but a fourth term might be a step too far even for a country that was barely affected by the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings. Several Bouteflika rallies were canceled after they were disrupted by demonstrations, raising fears that another victory could lead to greater unrest.
And that is very telling because the agenda-pushing paper puts nice names to coups it foments, be they regime changes or the replacement of stale dictators on whom they have turned. Starnge how vital U.S. allies (like Saudi Arabia) avoided the Arab Spring.
Bouteflika’s rule has been characterized by economic growth, thanks to high oil prices and a return to stability after battles against Islamists in the 1990s. But heavy government spending is running up against dwindling oil reserves and falling prices. The country is still run by the same generation that won independence from France in 1962.
‘‘We are in a backward world — it’s the old telling the young to get out of the way,’’ said Abderrahmane Hadj-Nacer, a former central bank governor. ‘‘The people have been corrupted by the distribution of houses and jobs. Productivity has been destroyed.’’
In fact, the disaffected students playing soccer have their education and housing paid for by the government, and they talk about waiting to be given a job rather than going out and finding one. ‘‘We have taught our youth to just to stick out their hand,’’ Hadj-Nacer added.
Who do they think they are, bankers and Zionist Israelis?
Stability and the state’s largesse have been themes of the campaign by the president’s surrogates, who warn that perks like free housing could end or civil war could return if the president is not reelected.
‘‘He brought you from the darkness into the light, that is the miracle of Bouteflika,’’ Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal roared at the final rally in Algiers on Sunday, his voice hoarse from campaigning.
Much of the 5,000-strong crowd came from public-sector companies or unions with government ties. Supporters were bused in from across country.
The bullshit politics are the same everywhere.
‘‘It is true he’s tired, but his brains still work — he doesn’t need to use his hands,’’ said Akila Kelloud, a union member from Medea.
The country is in a delicate phase. Despite Algeria’s foreign reserves of $200 billion, international financial institutions are sounding alarms, describing the economy as overly dependent on oil as prices are threatening to drop.
Then why are gas prices going up?
Oil and gas make up 95 percent of exports and 63 percent of budget revenue but employ only 2 percent of the labor force. Worse, the reserves are dwindling and the country’s trade balance is expected to go negative.
In February, the International Monetary Fund warned that ‘‘wide-ranging structural reforms’’ are needed to reduce unemployment and grow the economy.
Uh-oh. Another reason Algeria is on the agenda-pushing radar.
Heavy state spending has cut unemployment to under 10 percent, but it is still at 25 percent for young people.
The man who says he can fix this is Ali Benflis, former prime minister and the main opposition candidate among five.
‘‘I offer an alternative, a new project, and I want to put the youth into the center of decision-making,’’ he said.
Barack Benflis?
He said he has visited all 48 provinces and logged more than 100 hours of air travel in the campaign. His challenge is not just to win over the millions who don’t vote, but to guard against fraud, which observers say often characterizes Algerian contests. ‘‘If there is fraud I will not be quiet,’’ he said.
You got your fraud, so why did you clam up?
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"Algerians vote with stability on their minds; Ailing president expected to win, despite unrest" by Paul Schemm | Associated Press April 18, 2014
ALGIERS — Algeria’s ailing president was wheeled to the voting booth Thursday to cast his ballot for his fourth term in an election he is expected to dominate as the few Algerians who do bother going to the polls will most likely choose stability over change.
Scattered clashes erupted around the country as young men attacked some polling stations, however, hinting at the dissatisfaction over President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s rule.
Bouteflika voted in front of state media at an Algiers polling station. It was his first public appearance since May 2012 and followed his absence from an election campaign that was entirely about his record 15 years ruling this oil-rich US ally in the war against terror.
Need I really comment anymore on these events?
The president is recovering from a stroke he suffered last year that left him with speaking and mobility difficulties, but he retains some popularity for a population traumatized by war.
Voter turnout in the capital appeared to be fairly light, with older people voting in numbers and the young — who make up a majority of the population — staying away. Three hours before the polls closed, the government reported a nationwide turnout of 37 percent.
Not a mandate.
Despite a vigorous campaign waged by the main opposition candidate, Ali Benflis, the president was expected to win with a comfortable margin. Algerians interviewed at polling stations appeared to respond to his message that he is still the only man able to ensure stability.
He won by that and then some!
Memories of a brutal struggle against radical Islamists in the 1990s that claimed 200,000 lives are still fresh in many people’s memory, and for them Bouteflika has been synonymous with a return to peace.
‘‘Young people don’t vote, but people my age vote because they remember the dark times, and they know what’s important,’’ said Nabil Damous, a 41-year-old voting in the low-income Bab el-Oued neighborhood. ‘‘People who don’t vote don’t want this country to move forward.’’
That's bad news for Obummer.
Sonia Izem, a middle-age woman, said she was voting for Bouteflika because she, too, remembered when Bab el-Oued was a battleground between security forces and Islamists — and because she felt that the rampant corruption in the country would be less during the fourth term.
‘‘The people around him have already stolen a lot and they have nearly filled their sack and they won’t need to steal very much in the next term,’’ she said. ‘‘If we bring in someone new, they will have to start stealing all over again.’’
Yet while Algeria escaped the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab Spring, frustrated youth stage thousands of small demonstrations every year over the lack of jobs, opportunities, and housing.
In several cities, young people clashed with police after attempting to destroy ballot boxes. The most serious clash was near Bouira, 60 miles southeast of Algiers, in which 44 policemen and numerous demonstrators were injured.
Thanks to high oil prices over the past decade, dissatisfaction has been addressed by spending the country’s impressive oil wealth, but resources are dwindling and soon the government may have to pursue a different approach.
The government said 186,000 police were mobilized to protect the polls. There was heavy security in Algiers on Thursday. A few small demonstrations by those calling for a boycott of the vote quickly dispersed.
Benflis, the opposition candidate, has warned against election fraud and said that he and his supporters will not remain silent, but he has stopped short of calling for demonstrations.
Who bought him off?
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Also see: Algerian Aberration
All shoved up the old memory hole.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Just a friendly reminder that the auto-pilot government not go off course:
"Insurgents kill 16 Algerian soldiers" | Associated Press April 21, 2014
ALGIERS — Islamist insurgents ambushed an Algerian military convoy in a mountainous region, killing 16 soldiers, two days after Algeria’s presidential election, officials said Sunday.
The attack near the village of Iboudraren began Saturday night as an army detachment returned to its base in Tizi Ouzou, capital of the mountainous Kabylie region east of Algiers, according to a ministry statement carried by the official APS news agency.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suspicion falls on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, whose fighters are holed up in the Kabylie region, some 60 miles from the capital.
A local official said a large group of insurgents hid on both sides of the road and opened fire with automatic weapons as the military bus drove by.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Security forces surrounded the zone, killing three extremists, the ministry said.
The soldiers were returning from securing polling stations for last Thursday’s presidential election, which the government said was won in a landslide by the 77-year-old incumbent president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
The Kabylie region has been the site of past clashes, including one three years ago, also in April, that killed at least 13 soldiers at an army post during a presidential speech on electoral reform, watched by many soldiers.
That attack was claimed by the Algeria-based Al Qaeda affiliate.
Algeria fought a 10-year civil war against Islamic insurgents in the 1990s after the army canceled a parliamentary election that an Islamic party had been poised to win.
Bouteflika has been credited with bringing peace to the North African nation.
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