Memories of a “black decade” and comparisons with collapsing Venezuela flow inescapably from the political tumult in Algeria that has curtailed the 20-year presidency of octogenarian Abdelaziz Boutefika. Neither fate is inevitable.
Boutefika is no Nicolas Maduro, the despot now finishing what his predecessor, socialist Hugo Chavez, began: the demolition of Venezuela.
The Algerian president has his faults, most immediately the misjudgment to seek a fifth term despite age and incapacitation from a 2013 stroke. But he did not, like the Chavez-Maduro wrecking crew, lure Algerians into deprivation with promises of everything for everyone from a supposedly benevolent state.
Boutefika guided Algeria away from 10 years of civil strife. He also consolidated authority in the presidency and a power nexus of military, bureaucratic, and business elites.
Popular dissatisfaction with ineffectual rule-by-establishment was high before Boutefika announced his fifth-term candidacy in February, triggering unusually widespread protests.
Algerians reel from a combination punch that slammed all Arab oil exporters.
Algeria spent lavishly on handouts to citizens to contain uprisings during the Arab Spring of 2011. Three years later, the oil market collapsed, crippling an Algerian oil and gas industry creaky from mismanagement.
Since then, the government hasn’t been able to buy tranquility.
Conditions are not unlike those preceding Algeria’s black decade. Amid an effort by the government to reform away from socialism, oil prices plunged in October 1985. Deadly riots began 3 years later.
Probably because Algerians remember those troubles, the new protests have been large but mostly nonviolent. But protestors are determined.
Boutefika on Mar. 8 withdrew his candidacy, postponed the Apr. 18 election he would have won, promised constitutional reform, and shuffled his government.
Protests still grew and, by this writing, featured calls for Boutefika’s immediate ouster.
Algerians want change. Their government needs to change.
But Algerians don’t want another black decade. Their government needs to affirm that hope.
Algeria is not Venezuela. Like any country, though, it courses through history just one horrid government away from ruin.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Mar. 16, 2019. To comment, join the Commentary channel at www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity.)