First round to the fundamentalists
LATE in the evening of December 26, 1991, Algeria learned the results of the first round of the legislative elections.' The fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which has pledged to introduce an Islamic state in Algeria, had won, in cally minded forces and extend its base a credible force capable of initiating
ALGERIA cial and organizational means, a voting system that inflated the scores of the big parties and biased media coverage. The complexity of the voting procedures,
Excluding the illiterate an election in which only 6.8 million of the 13 million registered voters had turned out to vote. There was discreet rejoicing in the fundamentalist camp, and shock among its opponents, silence and hesitation from the regime and futile fussing by impotent government bodies.
CHAWKI SALHI
T
HE results show that, in the absence of a mass workers party, workers, the unemployed and the youth chose to express their rejection of liberalism by voting for a reactionary force, which has been able to give the impression of being a radical, powerful and effective opposition able to lift Algerians out of their misery.
The electoral system encouraged the
"useful vote" and reinforced the temptation to vote for the FIS as a vote against the ruling
National Liberation Front
(PLN).
In the first round, the FIS has won outright 188 of the 430 seats and remains in the running in almost all the 199 seats still to be decided. It gained 3.26 million of the 6.8 million votes cast.
Islamic parties win majority
If the 150,000 votes for the Ennaahda party, politically hardly distinguishable from the FIS, and the 368,000 votes for the more moderate fundamentalist Hamas are added on, the Islamic parties won a majority of the votes. The FIS only has to win 28 seats in the second round to have the majority all by itself.
The FIS' success underlines its influence among the popular sectors, and the electoral system may well give it a majority of the deputies with a minority of the votes in the second round.
The Front of Socialist Forces (FFS)
gave expression to the wish of the Berber people to speak their own language (Tamazight) and aroused hope among oppo-:
nents of the fundamentalists in the centre of the country. However, with 510,000 votes and 26 deputies it is no position to make a bid for power, even if it wins all the 13 seats where it is still in the running in the second round. Its line today is to establish its leadership of the democratioutside its stronghold in the Berber Kabylia region.
With 1.65 million votes and a mere 15 deputies in the first round, the FLN garnered votes from the countryside, as yet untouched by the Octoiar tempest?' well as of layers worried by the rise of the FIS. It remains in the running in 172 seats in the second round. Its significant score, contradicting the heavy burden of its 30 years in power, shows that many middle class people as well as a considerable number of poorer people voted for it out of fear of the FIS.
The intellectual and. social elites appear to have chosen to vote for the multitude of liberal democratic parties, their votes being rendered useless by the electoral system. The Cultural Democratic Assembly with 200,000 votes and Ben Bella's Algerian Democratic Movement with 135,000 as well as the 30-odd other liberal parties that garnered a further 300,000 votes campaigned, with the blessing of the regime, for a two round system in which the FLN can hope to garner the votes of these parties.
Thousands of candidates
They have wasted enormous sums putting up thousands of candidates, plastering walls with their ambitious leaders only to disappear from history through incompetence. They fought against the proportional system which would have ensured that they got representation; fre netically active in the luxury hotels and on the front pages of the press, they were altogether less active out in the real world.
Of forty parties, only three remain. The Socialist Workers Party (PST -Algerian supporters of the Fourth International) aroused some interest in its campaign, but was not of course, seen as
The complicated voting procedure was designed to exclude the illiterate, and only the FIS made the mobilizing effort invalid votes thereforerepresent votes lost from illiterate supporters of the FIS' opponents.
In many women's polling stations, the FIS gained a big victory. The right of women to vote, freshly won under the noses of the fundamentalists, turned out to the advantage of the enemies of women's rights, because the so-called democratic parties did not attempt to get women out to vote and have not brought them into political debate; the fundamentalists. on the other hand, were able to rely c ..zir women militants.
The PST took part in these elections in order to go through the democratic experience with the masses and present a socialist alternative. Both the Stalinist Party of the Socialist Vanguard (PAGS) and the Labour Party (PT - followers of French Trotskyist Pierre Lambert) boycotted the elections, with the first demanding the banning of the FIS, and the second the release of imprisoned FIS leaders as a condition. dropped the talk about a FIS-FLN or FISwhile launched its diminished forces into a hysterical campaign for the cancellation of the second round. The regime, which promised us free and honest elections, was not expecting either the FIS' victory or the high rate of abstention. The Minister of the Interior first mumbled about everything having passed off calmly; popular participation was taking place. Later, however, when the scale of the regime's defeat became clear — with the FIS gaining so many seats that a turnaround in the second round was clearly impossible - it seems that the possibility of a coup was considered. 1. See Insernational Viewpoins no. 218, December 9, 1991. 2. A reference to the repression that followed the rioks ?
International Viewpoint #220 • January 20, 1992
ALGERIA
Panic sets in
Panic set in, notably among the middle classes, and was used io launch a crazy campaign for the cancellation of the elections. Leaders of the democratic parties, the PAGS and the democratic newspapers plunged into a Committee for the Salvation of Algeria formed by the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
is necessary to tear the youth away from them, continue the fight against liberalism and resist the plans of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which the FIS' president, Hashani, has said he will respect. The factories must again become the centre of the struggle of the oppressed; the revolt of the marginalized youth must be the striking force of the popular masses but not its leadership. This is the challenge that has to be met. The workers movement has unfortunately been slow to react, but it represents the only force that can re-awaken hope. *
Women fight exclusion and employers' organizations.
This activity discredits democracy and increases the size of the FIS maintaining an Olympian calm. The only comforting event has been the massive success of the march called by the FFS' Ait Ahmed for January 2, which brought out an estimated 300,000 people in "defence of democracy".
Finally, the regime is challenging the validity of ballots in the FIS' seats, where indeed there have been many cases of fraud, with 341 appeals in 150 constituencies. The electoral process will thus be protracted, improving the FLN's chances, but above all it will allow the FLN to get its reply to the FIS in order. There is talk of a Ministry of the Interior that would bring together Defence and Foreign Affairs around the presidency. The governor of the central bank, who already has very wide powers, would also be free from control by a future elected head of the government.
It does not seem likely that the FLN can catch up, even if some of the FIS' results are cancelled by the Constitutional Council. But the game is not yet over; there could be a FIS-FLN coalition, an Islamic technocratic government or the radical wing might push ahead.
Attitude of the West
There is a question mark over the attitude of the West to an FIS government; will the country be left to be crushed under the weight of the debt? Imperialism is hesitating between the possibilities offered by a terrorist regime which can beat down purchasing power, close public enterprises and open the economy to the world market, and the fear of destabilizing its domination in the region.
The campaign by the National Committee for the Salvation of Algeria (CNSA), which is mobilizing the democrats against democracy, legitimizes the FIS in the eyes of its electorate with its call for what is, in effect, a military dictatorship. This committee is paving the way for the demoralization of the FIS' opponents in the second round. The only way to resist the setting up of a fundamentalist dictatorship is mobilization in defence of cultural and democratic gains. Only those freedoms that are not defended will be lost, and a struggle can be effective regardless of which government is in place. The defenders of democratic liberties must act in common.
However to beat the fundamentalists it and poverty
THE following article by Shafia Jemame, an Algerian socialist feminist, first appeared in the November 7, 1991 issue of Sozialistische Leitung, paper of the German United Soclalist Party (VSP).
UCH has been said and written in the Western media in recent years about the women's movement in Algeria, above all about its struggle against the Islamic fundamentalists. However, this movement did not arise yesterday.
Already during the war of independence, women took part in the liberation struggle. Some, the best known among them, but only a minority, planted bombs. Others went into the mountains and joined the guerilla struggle. Most, however, joined the resistance in the towns, while the men took to the mountains. Their participation in this struggle has given Algerian women a strong sense of historical legitimacy. Even today, women involved in the war of independence take the front line in the movement, above all at the moments of sharpest confrontation with the funda-
The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) has never acknowledged that women took part in the guerilla struggle. In 1958 it gave the order that all the women fighting in the mountains on the Tunisian border should be sent back into the home. Women have never been represented in the leading bodies of the FLN
It was in the FLN's nature that, at the time of the declaration of independence, it should pursue its policy of excluding women. Resistance to this took shape in the capital, Algiers. This led the president of the time, Ben Bella, to call an Algerian women's association into being, in order to head off the women's protests.
Throughout the whole existence of this association, that is, since 1963, its leadership has always been in the hands of men. Some of them have permitted themselves, when speaking of the association, to say "we, the women of Algeria."
The roots of the present women's movement lie outside this organization. It is the work rather of women outside the association who have resisted attempts by the government to enact anti-women legislation.
The FLN was a liberation movement with a national programme. It had no precise social programme for the building of an independent Algeria, and has come under the influence of the most diverse social forces, including that of the fundamentalists.
Attempts to impose family law
Since independence, the government has tried many times to impose a family law which regulates marriage, divorce, inheritance and so on according to Islamic law. Such a law was entirely unacceptable to the women who had taken part in the war of independence, and in the decade after independence they created an unorganized women's movement which reacted to events as they arose.
With the industrialization drive of the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, girls were allowed to go to school and university; the newly founded industries needed working women. At this time women were able to significantly improve their social position. But with the end of the "Golden Age" at the start of the 1980s the situation of women once again began to deteriorate. Layoffs affected women first. The government once again began to seek to legislate against women.
In the 1980s, independent movements such as the women's movement, the student movement and the Berber movement were harshly suppressed. It was the women's movement that put up the stiffest resistance to the government; people would say: The women are the only men left in this country.
However, lacking a firm national organization, even the women's movement
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January 20, 1992 • #220 International Viewpoint finally went under. After the big demonstrations of 1981, '82, and '83, the movement suffered a big retreat in 1984. And this was the very year in which the government brought the family law before the national assembly.
In 1988 Algeria saw a social explosion. The youth occupied the streets of the capital and attacked all the institutions that symbolized the regime. In Algeria 60% of the population is under 20 and 75% under 25 years old. This revolt shook the regime; one of its results was that it allowed several political parties to be set up.
Murder and mass torture
The subsequent repression was terrible. There were deaths and torture was used -for the first time since independence — and on a mass scale. Thousands of young people "disappeared". Women besieged the barracks, the police stations and prisons; they organized committees for the release of their sons, against torture and for democratic freedoms. It was out of this movement that organized groups of women emerged in a variety of places, above all in the north of the country.
These women's structures had broadly similar aims. In time, and through common work, they constructed a national coordination. This collaboration was strengthened by the malicious campaign which the fundamentalists had launched against women. At first this campaign was conducted through verbal insults in the streets, the media and the mosques, and with the use of anti-women arguments.
The essential message was: The only cause of the crisis striking Algeria is are responsible for unemployment since they
Women are responsible for the decline of the education system, since most teachers are women. Women are responsible for rising crime because they are not where they should be, bringing children up properly; women are responsible for the moral decay of the country.
After a few months the whole country was in a state of real psychosis. Women were being attacked in the streets, on the buses, at work, in the universities - especially women on their own - whether widowed, divorced or single.
At this time, almost every weekend, the women's groups organized rallies, demonstrations and other activities. The movement seemed to grow with every attack. The 1990, communal elections brought the fundamentalists' campaign to a standstill. For the whole of 1989 and the first half of 1990, the women's movement was practically the only force that actively opposed the fundamentalists, apart from that of the far left parties.
Nonetheless, the activity of the women's movement led the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the biggest of the Islamic parties, to change its approach to women for the communal elections. The same people who had been inveighing against women, now started talking about a wage for housewives. If you asked how this was to be paid, the answer would be that the police would be abolished — an argument especially popular among the young.
Since the revolt of 1988 there has been a deep gulf between the population and the FLN regime. The FLN is seen as corrupted and has lost the confidence of the peo-
Opposed to the regime, the fundamentalists propose to restore moral values and social justice. They have promised housing for all. There is an extremely severe housing shortage in
Promising heaven on earth
On the average, seven people live in dwellings of nine square metres. Whoever promises housing promises heaven on earth. They have promised a just distribution of water. There is indeed water in the rich quarters but not for the poor.
Such promises have found a good reception among women. They saw their daily housework valued and a possibility of improving their living conditions. This explains why women who had taken part in demonstrations against fundamentalist attacks voted for these same fundamentalists on June 12, 1990, and contributed to
The electoral law was devised so that a man could vote for himself, for his wife and for three other people. On the eve of the 1990 poll the interior minister publicly stated that there would be no identity checks at the voting stations. In this situation every kind of electoral fraud could be
People would vote several times in different booths or towns, absent or dead people voted and so on.
This led the women's movement to concentrate its attention on the electoral law. It has succeeded in getting the right of men to vote for three other people withdrawn.
However it has not yet succeeded in depriving a husband of the right FRONT
İSLAMiQUE BISEST
ALGERIA to cast his wife's vote. Nonetheless the women's movement has won a victory. Once again it was this movement and the far left who have fought for basic democratic rights. Now, the front has widened; 28 parties are now demanding the reform of the electoral law.
Women do not only have to deal with democratic questions. Another issue is the economic crisis, which has worsened in recent months. The agreement made by the government with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has meant massive job losses. The official unemployment rate is 22%, but is in reality higher; the dinar has already been devalued twice but wages have hardly risen. Purchasing power has been sharply reduced and the government has decided to abolish subsidies on basic necessities.
This means a huge deterioration in the living conditions of women. Previously, the health care system was free, but now one has to pay.
State plans for health care have disappeared into the bottom drawer, since the state is withdrawing from the health service. This means a huge rise in the death rate for women.
The price of school books has sharply risen. Families will soon have to decide which children to send to school. On the average, every woman has seven children. It will of course be the girls who lose out. Similarly it is women who get laid off first. They will thus have to enter the shadow economy, selling home-made products in the markets to supplement their shrinking housekeeping money. The prospect looms of growing impoverishment, which will destroy all possibility for women's emancipation.
The fear is that the subjection of the government to the IMF's diktats will only serve to make the reactionary ideology of the fundamentalists more popular. Women are the victims in both cases; on the one
FLN's liberal, pro-capitalist orientation, and on the other from the Islamic movement which wants to re-create the past.