Major, Minor: on Algerian Students’ Demands (16/4; Fr-En)
How changed is Algeria, since the Algiers II students’ inaugurating 12 March Declaration?
Abdelaziz Boutefliqa resigned as President on 3 April, replaced six days after by long-term ally and Upper Chamber leader, Abdelkader Bensalah; the same day, 9 April, both state and parastate repression increased (on which, see Malia Bouattia’s 19 April report); and against both — the regime’s cardshuffle; police’s teargas — mass protests, still pacific, have continued across the country.
On university students’ role in this post-Boutefliqa phase, Adlène Belhmer, university student and member of the Parti socaialiste des travailleurs (PST; Algeria) was interviewed Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (NPA; France). It was published on 16 April.
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What’s happening, with the mobilisation in the universities?
The university is at forefront of the popular movement. As well as their involvement in the the big Friday marches, the students march every Tuesday, with their own slogans. There’s a dynamic of self-organisation in a number of universities, established through democratically-elected committees.
For sure, this dynamic is limited to the bigger universities, but the idea of the self-organisation of students is making is making its way (fait son bonhomme de chemin).
Discredit has been poured on certain satellite organisations, which play, through universities, the role of appendage to the pouvoir politique . The students are re-appropiating their spaces, after a long period under an authoritarian lead weight, which has stifled the student dynamic.
Debates are regularly organise on themes related to the movement, and the students have joined the strike this week, as we saw, in huge numbers [1]. In fact, we’ve seen, in this dynamic, a dialectical articulation between theory and practice, which builds a path, conscious and radical, towards finishing with a system which has for a long time been a bully, against the collective aspirations of the popular masses.
What are the demands being made?
The students’ demands are in-step with the popular movement’s, which is to say, the departure of the system in its entirety. But, we’re also putting forward demands concerned withthe reality of the university itself, and so you might read, on some banners, “For Public Universities, Free and High Quality”.
Students are calling for the departure of the system — the major demand — with more minor demands, as coming from the reality of the Algerian university.
Another thing: the call for a constituent assembly is more and more voiced by students. It’s for them to reflect the true, popular demands, that only a constituent assembly can present — an assembly which has, for its base, society organised around popular, democratic committees, with elected and revocable representatives.
How is the [Abdelkader] Bensalah’s election being perceived?
First of all, Bensalah is not elected. He is part of the ‘presidential third’ of the Uppoer House that is designated by the president; a member of the close circle once around the former President Boutefliqa, and a loyal servant of the regime. His designation [on 9 April] as Interim President is an element of the juridical working of Article 102 [of the constitution].
From his accession to the Presidential Palace — which coincided, incidentally, with the repression of the students of Algiers — the protestors have contested his legitimacy, since he is compromised within the existing system.
Already, he’s on the ‘3B’ podium, whose departure the people are demanding: Bensalah’s,[Noureddine] Bedoui’s, and [Tayeb] Belaiz’s, who’s just resigned. For the popular masses currently in movement — in their eighth week of mobilisation — the departure of all the political personages of the ancien régime is non-negotiable.
The pouvoir is maintaining the option of limiting [the movement] through a constitutional formalism, that the protestors have already gone beyond. They are opposing to constitutional solution that the holders of power are attempting to sell as a political solution, as expressed in the slogan “a Sovereign Constitutional Assembly”.
Are you being repressed?
The students of Bijayah university are marching every Friday, without being disturbed by the police. In fact, except a couple of flics in civilian clothes, there’s been no sign of any police presence. In Algiers though, last week’s demonstration was strongly suppressed, causing a lot of injuries. This is perhaps understandable, through the fact that peripheral regions like Bijayah aren’t, like Algiers, the nerves centre of the pouvoir, at the moment when the regime seems struck with a temptation to repress.
Something new: in a speech, the Major General Ahmed Gaid Salah, the moment’s strong man, disapproved of the recourse to violences delivered by the police — proof of the contests shaking those at highest, decision-maker level. On the march today in Bijayah, in which I took part, the students expressed their solidarity with the Algiers comrades.
We must remember, all the same, that the repression of the Algiers students has been one of the reasons for the continuation of the strike movement in a good number of universities.
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[1] University students struck nationally on 14 April.
