Friends,
Consider
joining the Baltimore Nonviolence Center and Baltimore Peace Action at a rally
at the State Department on Monday, April 1 at noon to condemn the Trump
administration’s foreign policy. During the rally, a group of advocates
will attempt to deliver a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seeking a
meeting to end the State Department’s complicity in war crimes and other
indignities around the world. This group will meet at 10 AM at a restaurant
near the State Department to prepare for the letter delivery. If you are
interested in joining this group, I will let you know the address of the
restaurant.
If you are
coming to the rally, consider making a sign demanding a change in State
Department policy on Trump’s support for Saudi Arabia and its war on the people
of Yemen or Trump’s mistreatment of the Palestinians or his refusal to close
Guantanamo or his embrace of many dictatorial regimes, including Egypt, the
Philippines, and Brazil, or the administration’s attempt to overthrow the
government of Venezuela or the threat of war with Iran or the abrogation of the
Iran Agreement as well as the INF Treaty or the likes of Mike Pompeo, John
Bolton and Elliott Abrams making foreign policy. Take photographs and
live stream if you are able, and share this on social media so that there is a
record of this act of resistance to the State Department’s malfeasance. We
recognize the need to resist the US government’s illegal, immoral and
unconscionable foreign policy.
Kagiso, Max
April 1, 2019
Michael R. Pompeo
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20520
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Algerian
Protesters Reject Military's Gambit to Maintain Power
Simon
Speakman Cordall
March
27, 2019
Al-Monitor
After weeks
of mounting protests in Algeria, with hundreds of thousands gathering to
call upon ailing 82-year-old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to
relinquish office, there are further signs of the president’s inner circle
deserting him.
The army’s chief
of staff, Gen. Ahmed Gaed Salah — backed by a key part of the country’s
ruling coalition, the National Rally for Democracy, and the General Union of
Algerian Workers — has echoed protesters’ demands for the president to
step aside, proposing a managed process that would see power ceded to a senior
member of the country’s political establishment.
But
protesters buoyed by the apparent groundswell of support for their
cause have dismissed the compromise measure from the country’s ruling
elite as little more than a tactical olive branch intended to maintain power
within the close political circle that has formed around the
infirm president.
Speaking on
television, Salah told viewers, “We must find a way out of this crisis
immediately, within the constitutional framework." For the army, at least,
that constitutional framework appears to be invoking Article 102 of the Algerian
Constitution, declaring Bouteflika unfit for office and for power to be
transferred to a caretaker power.
However, protest
leaders have been scornful of the move. Opposition leader Sofiane Djilali,
president of the Jil Jadid party, dismissed the offer and
was quoted as saying, "Neither the opposition nor the people will
accept this operation. The whole system has to go."
Djilali’s comments
found ready echoes upon the street, as protesters tired of almost 30 years of
economic and political stagnation voiced their rejection of the offer. “Of
course I will still protest until our demands come true,” a spokesperson
for one of the leading protest groups — No to the Fifth Term, No to
the Perpetuation of Corruption — told Al-Monitor, adding that any
decision on Bouteflika’s fitness for office should have been taken at the time
of his devastating stroke in 2013 and not now. For the protest group, the
latest call from Salah was not so much a reflection of the popular will as
a cynical gambit to retain the army’s influence in government. The army
must hand power to the people, they said.
Others seized upon
the general’s comments as a de facto admission of the army’s longstanding
control on government. His comments were revealing, protester Khalil Che told
Al-Monitor, as “now he will be facing his responsibility because now many
people will know that Gaid Salah is the real government."
“Since 1962 [the
date of Algeria’s independence], the military [has been] the real power that
makes the decisions,” Khalil said.
The mood among
many of the millions who have flooded Algeria’s streets over the previous five
weekends similarly appeared as defiant as ever. “The system must go. There
is no point for it [to resist],” Belkacem Abidi, 25, told Reuters as
he gathered with around 6,000 others — mostly students — in central
Algiers following Salah’s intervention.
If the army
maintains its plans to invoke Article 102, it risks setting itself on a
collision course with the protesters, whose determination to wrest the system
from political insiders who have coalesced around the president appear only
matched by their numbers and level of support.
According to the
constitution, Article 102 allows for Algeria’s constitutional council
to declare the presidency vacant if the incumbent is too sick to exercise the
functions of office. The council must then appeal to parliament to also declare
him unfit. The leader of the upper house, Abdelkader Bensalah, would then
take over in a caretaker capacity for 45 days. However, what power Bensalah
would have or what his ability would be to enact genuine
reform remains unclear.
“Protests will
continue. … Algerians’ demands include a change of the political system,”
lawyer and activist Mustapha Bouchachi told Reuters.
“The
implementation of Article 102 means that the symbols of the system will oversee
the transition period and organize presidential elections,” Bouchachi added.
Recent weeks have
seen the defection of many of Algeria’s leading parties and politicians from
the side of the government to that of the protesters. On Sunday, the
president’s own National Liberation Front backtracked on its support for the
incumbent’s suggestion for a "national dialogue conference" intended
to oversee major constitutional reform, with spokesman Hocine Khaldoun telling
the private Dzair TV network the conference would "not solve the
problem."
"Honestly, we
are going to revise our position on the conference," Khaldoun added,
saying that the "conference will not solve the issue because participants
will not be elected."
Algeria’s popular
protests have grown in numbers since initial demonstrations against
Bouteflika’s proposed fifth run for office broke out in Bordj Bou
Arreridj, about 125 miles from the capital, on Feb. 13. Fueled
by a series of apparent government climbdowns — including rescinding the
president’s fifth bid for power — their numbers have since swollen as
Algerians from all strata of society have flooded the country’s cities to
demand the departure of the country’s paraplegic leader.
Algeria’s protests
have been greeted with some apprehension by neighboring countries that
typically look to the North African state as either a partner in
counterterrorism or a significant source of hydrocarbons, though thus
far exports have remained unaffected.
Within Algeria itself,
the pressure from the street appears unrelenting. The No to the
Fifth Term protest group said the end was within sight. Victory “is
not that far," the group's spokesperson told Al-Monitor, adding, “We
must continue our pressure on unconstitutional individuals and the military
establishment.”
Simon Speakman
Cordall is a Tunis-based journalist.
Source URL: https://portside.org/2019-03-30/algerian-protesters-reject-militarys-gambit-maintain-power
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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