On February 22, 2019, Algerian people have taken to the streets across the country against the fifth term of the ousted president Bouteflika. But implicitly, people young, old, women and men have protested against the huge corruption and the mismanagement Scandal that characterized the state since the coming of Bouteflika in 1994, especially since his third term. Now, after ten months since the enormous popular movement, we have the right to ask: what has been achieved in order to eliminate the duality of corruption and mismanagement? We can answer without any doubt that nothing big has been achieved until now.
Of course, the Algerian people and the Army have played a significant role to force Bouteflika to resign, and to imprison several symbols of Bouteflika’s corrupt regime. But, that was not sufficient to convince the angry people to go back home. “To imprison the theft and the corrupt doesn’t mean that we are going necessarily to the State of law and rights and doesn’t implicit that the public services will improve”, The Algerian people know this fact. That’s why we can still see a part of the popular movement take to the street, not convinced or satisfied with the authority steps, they afraid to see the Army does what Bouteflika regime did, Although the Army played a significant role to imprison corrupts, and has declared several times that It will be against corruption. The Algerians have no longer trusted anyone.
Thus, the problem is not just about the conditions of elections, but basically about the absence of any Clear will or procedures to eliminate the causes of corruption and mismanagement, such as organize a scientific, political, economic, juridical, social and technical Dialogues and open a national dialogue to draft a national charter against corruption and mismanagement, etc. All we have seen, the insist of the Army to go to the presidential elections, elites and angry people divided between who is with the elections and who is against it, and divided too between who is with the Army and elections and who is against. All the parties have forgotten the big issue, even the popular movement itself. We no longer hear any words from any part about the big dilemma of Algeria “corruption and mismanagement”.
What had to be the first, presidential elections or procedures to eliminate corruption causes?
The practical and implicitly answer from all parts in Algeria was: let’s put an elected president first, but they differed on the guarantees of fair elections. No one talked or poses questions about the historic dilemma of Algeria “corruption and mismanagement”, Even in what so-called presidential debate between presidents candidates.
Certainly, only the elected president who can fight and guide the multi parties of the society to eliminate the corrupt environment, But when we haven’t seen any debates about this dilemma before presidential elections we think, undoubtedly, that we are not going to focus on it after the presidential elections, and that’s not only because of the army or president but because of all the parties in Algeria. For example, during these ten months, we haven’t seen any serious academic conferences or initiatives about the best ways to eliminate the corrupt environment in State that has two million university students. As well as, at the political level, we haven’t seen political discourses focus on the solutions to this dilemma.
Now, what the Algerian people, through their elites, have to do in order to fight corruption and eliminate mismanagement is to push the newly elected president and cooperate with to find out solutions to this dilemma. by the way, even if this president “is not legal”, as some think, he will be, under pressure, react with any anti-corruption initiative contains procedures to fight corruption, especially in this stage. The will that Algeria needs to overcome their fundamental crisis is the will of people, elites and intellectuals. the President can’t control corrupt university teachers but students can do, the president can’t control bosses and responsible in public institutions but the workers can do, etc. and the big case, a president can’t draft an earnest charter about how to eliminate the corrupt environment alone, but teachers, doctors, students, engineers and others can do that in a frame of a national comprehensive dialogue without waiting the authority to organize it for them.
The core thing that precedes everything we wrote is political awareness and knowledge of people about their rights; this can only be achieved by the intellectual and professors. But which professors and intellectuals we are talking about in Algeria? When we see a professor was employed by corruption and favouritism and he, in turn, employs others by the same method, then we can’t imagine any real reform that can be achieved in the medium-term. It is too big to confine it in just presidential elections. It’s related to the absent role of elites and intellectuals in the big battle against corruption, some of them have a dream but they don’t have any tangible planning to achieve.
