LOCAL ELECTIONS 2007: A CONFUSED AND UNEVEN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ALGIERS 001527

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/18/2027
TAGS: PGOV KDEM KPAO AG
SUBJECT: LOCAL ELECTIONS 2007: A CONFUSED AND UNEVEN
PLAYING FIELD

Classified By: Ambassador Robert Ford; reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: The road to the November 29 elections for
Algeria's city councils and provincial (state) legislatures
is fraught with confusion, a lack of transparency and
allegations of injustice surrounding the candidate lists
proposed by the competing parties. Senior political leaders
echo the man on the street in acknowledging that the public
has much less faith in the ballot box as a means of effecting
the change so many view as critical. Opposition parties are
either not allowed to or lack the resources to gain equal
time in the media. Finally, significant gaps have emerged in
the ability of central political party structures to control
local candidate lists, empowering the whims of the partisan
local election officials who control the process at the
periphery. The parliamentary elections in May never gained
much public interest and voter turnout was only about 35
percent. In the wake of those elections, many Algerian
politicos and officials comforted themselves with the thought
that historically voters come out in bigger numbers to elect
Algerian city councils and state legislatures. Ambassador
told former Prime Minister Ouyahia, a key inside player, that
we would watch the local election process with great interest
in its fairness and credibility. Thus, again observers here
are focusing on the voter turnout as the big indicator of
whether Algeria's political system is getting any traction at
the street level or instead is becoming entirely irrelevant
to a public already weary of economic and social hardships.
END SUMMARY.


2. (C) As required by statute, all political parties
struggled to file their slate of candidates by the October 9
deadline, 50 days before the scheduled elections. The print
media buzzed with allegations of foul play from the
opposition parties, but these parties were not allowed any
television time to make their case. Karim Tabbou, the
operational director of the Front des Forces Socialistes
(FFS),Algeria's oldest opposition party, told PolChief on
October 17 that the FFS presented lists in some 30 wilayas
(provinces) but had ten of them rejected for various
procedural reasons. The FFS has taken its case directly to
the highest level, meeting with Prime Minister Belkhadem on
October 17 to push for a more transparent and user-friendly
process and urge Belkhadem to accept the rejected lists of
all parties. Belkhadem, himself the head of the ruling FLN
party coalition, said he would get back to them within "a few
days."

DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A CANDIDATE?
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3. (C) Islamist Society of Peace Movement (MSP) Party leader
and Minister-at-large Abujarra Soltani told Ambassador and
PolEc on October 16 that the process of accepting candidates
at local districts across the country is confusing and
unbelievably bureaucratic. In order to be accepted,
candidates must present six pieces of identification,
including their own birth certificate, their father's birth
certificate, and their grandfather's. (Moreover, his aide
noted, these papers can only be obtained by physically going
to the cities where the original birth certificates were
issued.) Tabbou of the FFS pointed out that all documents
must be presented in Arabic, while the transition from French
to Arabic as official national language has not yet
completely seeped through the national bureaucracy.
Documents in French must be accompanied by
officially-approved Arabic translations. Tabbou alleged that
these requirements were being exploited by local officials to
reject candidates in a capricious and random manner. Tabbou
described several specific cases from around the country
where the entire FFS list was rejected because the Arabic
transliteration of an original French document was deemed
imprecise or incorrect. Other anecdotes involve candidates
rejected for not being present at precisely the same time as
the party slate documents, even though both were present
before the midnight deadline in front of the same officials.

UNEVEN APPLICATION OF PROCEDURES
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4. (C) Tabbou echoed what French language daily El Watan
reported on October 10 - that the unwieldy bureaucratic

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requirements for becoming a candidate, combined with general
popular cynicism about the ability of the local elections to
achieve anything other than a predictable, inevitable result,
left parties struggling to find candidates willing to put
themselves forward. In the two weeks immediately preceding
the October 9 deadline, PolEc FSNs were themselves approached
in their neighborhood streets by opposition parties such as
the Worker's Party (PT),desperate to add names to their
depleted slates. The first question they were asked, even
before their name, was whether or not they had university or
graduate degrees. In the run-up to the elections, slates are
visible in local municipalities and are often published in
local flyers or newspapers, with candidates' educational
qualifications trumpeted in the little space next to their
names.


5. (C) Soltani, the head of one of the three parties of
President Bouteflika's ruling coalition, was extremely
pessimistic about the pre-election mood. Soltani and his
aide, Dahman Abdelrahmane, told us that as the MSP assembled
its lists it found some provincial officials relatively
flexible about which documents they would accept. Only in
Bejaia (an FFS stronghold) did they face serious problems,
according to Soltani. These two Islamist politicians said
the process was uneven and haphazard not because of a central
government instruction but rather because of regular Algerian
administrative laxity and the cultural norm of doing friends
favors. Maybe in ten or twenty years, Soltani mused, Algeria
will have an administration that truly can conduct a fair
democratic election.


6. (C) Minister Soltani appeared more worried about
maintaining the credibility of the system itself. According
to Soltani, Algerians - youth in particular - do not believe
their vote will put bread on their table, nor do they feel
that a credible alternative exists. The problem, according
to Soltani, is that Algerian youth are not stupid. Through
television and the internet, they are aware of how the rest
of the world lives, and they know that skyrocketing oil
revenues have brought incredible wealth to Algeria but they
still suffer from crushing unemployment, housing shortages
and above all an inability to start their own families.
(Note: Soltani himself is frustrated, considered stuck in the
middle of the current Algerian political scene - as a "tamed"
Islamist, he is viewed as too conservative for the regime's
tastes, but as part of the government he is considered not
conservative enough by the fragmented religious opposition.
Another MSP leader, Ahmed Boulayl, told us October 17 that
the MSP is hurting on the street because many Algerians doubt
its bonafides as a party of change when the MSP itself is in
the ruling parliamentary coalition. End note.)

A MORE SANGUINE VIEW FROM A SYSTEM INSIDER
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7. (C) In his October 16 meeting with Ambassador, former
Prime Minister and government coalition RND party leader
Ouyahia acknowledged that the May 2007 parliamentary election
turnout was disappointing but he discounted to us that the
political system had stopped evolving in a way to maintain
its relevance. He noted that parliamentary election turnout
in more advanced democracies was usually relatively low (a
point Interior Minister Zerhouni emphasized right after the
May 2007 results were announced). Ouyahia, like other
insiders here, point to the higher voter turnout historically
for city council and provincial legislature elections.
Ouyahia said the biggest challenge for the Algerian political
system was to find a way to explain to the public that
everyone had to work hard together to build Algeria. The
prevalence of cynicism makes this especially difficult, he
admitted. Ouyahia said he expected - and hoped - that voter
turnout on November 29 would be around 45 percent.
Ambassador told Ouyahia that the U.S. would watch the local
election process carefully with a view to how the process
evolved and whether or not Algerians found it credible.
Recalling how Islamist victories in local elections in 1990
left the country poised for crisis by 1991, the Ambassador
noted that opening the system too fast might be
destabilizing, but leaving the opposition less room in 2007
than it had a few years ago would be destabilizing too.
Ouyahia agreed that the political system has to keep evolving
gradually. (Comment: Ouyahia is no big friend of President

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Bouteflika but the former prime minister has plenty of ties
to the omnipresent security services and to civilian
administrators within the system. End Comment.)

THE PERIPHERY TRIUMPHS OVER THE CENTER
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8. (C) Tabbou echoed Soltani's cynicism, saying that local
election officials, themselves driven by the prevailing local
political forces of their own affiliation and the dominant
party in that particular region, ultimately have the final
say, and their decisions are unpredictable, exploiting a
variety of bureaucratic details to tailor the local process
to suit their ends. Not even intervention by the Interior
Ministry or Prime Minister Belkhadem himself has been able to
change this equation in many cases. A well-connected Embassy
contact in Oran outlined the triumph of regional struggles
within the FLN party, the predominant political party
nationally. Local FLN officials loyal to Oran Mayor
Boukhatem mutinied against Prime Minister Belkhadem's central
FLN party apparatus in Algiers. The result was a slate of
candidates not culled from Belkhkadem's favorites, but rather
from among local party loyalists, many of whom are
sympathetic to Belkhadem's rival, former Prime Minister Ali
Benflis. (Comment: multiple sources tell us that President
Bouteflika detests Benflis after Benflis mounted a serious
challenge to him in the 2004 presidential election. End
Comment.) Not even a recent Belkhadem visit to the Oran
region prior to the October 9 deadline was able to resolve
internal FLN squabbling in the region. Tabbou pointed out
that all party lists were accepted in Algiers, since "it is
much harder to play games in the capital" than it is in the
rest of the country.

A CRIPPLED, NARCISSISTIC MEDIA
--------------


9. (C) Tabbou said that opposition parties such as the FFS
and RCD were trying to use the media as much as possible to
highlight their concerns and push for greater transparency.
Tabbou himself gave a press conference on October 17
immediately after presenting FFS complaints to Prime Minister
Belkhadem. However, Tabbou pointed out that the FFS had not
been granted time on state-controlled television for the past
four years, leaving him to rely on foreign media and
Algeria's print media, much of which he described as
ineffective and biased, though dynamic and "noisy." In a
meeting with Ambasssador and PolEc on October 17, National
Democratic Rally (RND) leader Ahmed Ouyahia described the
print media's coverage of the local election preparations as
"narcissistic," saying it was always quick to present itself
as the defender of justice and truth and paint political
parties and the elections in broad, non-subtle strokes as
ineffective, unjust and rigged.

HELP FROM ABROAD BLOCKED
--------------


10. (C) Of the early September FFS party congress, designed
to inject new vigor into the party for both the coming local
elections as well as the 2009 presidential elections, Tabbou
highlighted the critical role for foreign support to promote
transparency and create viable alternatives. European
officials were scheduled to appear at the September congress
to show their support, but these officials were not granted
visas, according to Tabbou, reflecting a GOA desire too keep
the opposition on a leash. Soltani and Tabbou both said that
public statements of criticism by foreign ambassadors or
leaders would be counterproductive and might even have
adverse effects. They both opined that studies done by
foreign think tanks might help Algeria towards greater
political liberalization. Soltani also suggested that
engagement with Algerian think tanks such as the National
Institute for Global Strategic Studies (INESG) might provide
the best opportunity for exchange and transformation, in
addition to the ongoing programs of the National Conference
of State Legislatures (NCSL) within the MEPI context.
Soltani also urged more English Language programs and a
dramatic increase in exchanges of all kinds as the best way
for the U.S. to promote reform in Algeria.

COMMENT: A BIG TEST FOR THE SYSTEM

ALGIERS 00001527 004 OF 004


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11. (C) On the surface, there appears to be much lively
discussion about an ongoing local elections process whose
flaws are at least aired publicly in the written media.
However, this discussion is largely theoretical, since the
media can't compel the administration to implement changes in
the electoral process. Local party officials have been
successful in imposing their will on the party slates
submitted thus far, drawing justification at will from a wide
menu of unwieldy bureaucratic requirements. Election day is
still six weeks away, but our limited soundings suggest
public interest is about as low as it was prior to the May
2007 parliament election. Turnout in the November 29 local
elections could, therefore, again be very low. If turnout is
again low, internal dissension within the political parties
will likely grow as more Algerians come to the conclusion
that the political system, dominated by Bouteflika and the
FLN with the ready buy-in of players like Ouyahia and his RND
party, is dead in the water.
FORD