Algerian president offers dialogue, opposition calls for confidence building measures

In a regular gesture of détente, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has called on the political class and parties of both the government and the opposition to create a strong "internal front" capable of dealing with the crisis in the country, which is being fuelled by the current international crisis, with the war in Ukraine as a backdrop.  

The political formations of the government coalition, the National Democratic Rally (RND) and the National Liberation Front (FLN), as well as small satellite parties in the president's orbit, have responded affirmatively, praising the head of state's gesture. The opposition, however, demands prior confidence-building measures.

The president of the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), Mohcin Belabbes, believes that if the president really intends to unite the national forces in a common front, the first thing he should do is to release the prisoners of conscience who populate the prisons. 

Abdelaziz Rahabi, former Minister of Communication and former Algerian ambassador to Spain, was received by the president on Wednesday as the de facto representative of the broad popular political movement unleashed in Algeria in February 2019 and known as Hirak, as well as of the attempt to create a common front of the opposition. 

The day before the meeting between Rahabi and Tebboune, the ex-diplomat specified in a public forum the essential premises for the presidential appeal to be credible and effective. For Rahabi, the most urgent conditions relate to the exercise of political freedom for parties, trade unions, the associative movement and civil society. As well as the guarantee of "objective, free and responsible information". Bouteflika's former minister was equally clear in calling for "the release of the prisoners of opinion and of Hirak", leaving President Tebboune room to take the opportunity, in celebrating the 60th anniversary of independence on 5 July, "to protect individual and collective freedoms and to reconcile himself with our history as a country of free men". 

In a veiled allusion to the omnipresence of the military in the affairs of state and the conduct of Algerian politics, Abdelaziz Rahabi recalled that "the president constitutionally embodies the defence of Algeria's diplomatic interests" and thus has "all the powers and mechanisms to initiate the construction, preservation and consolidation of a national consensus on foreign policy and defence issues". The popular movement's offer of support to the head of state, if he decides to fully assume his constitutional duties and rid himself of the burden of de facto dependence on the military leadership, has not gone unnoticed. 

Following his meeting with the president on Wednesday, Abdelaziz Rahabi said they discussed "the direct and indirect implications of the international crisis on Algeria, not only economic but also security-related, and the need to build a strong internal front".

The proposal for political consensus advocated by the president and the clear demands of the political class and the opposition regarding respect for and guarantee of freedoms are the subject of widespread debate on social networks, which hope that the aspirations of the popular movement for change, which began more than three years ago, will not be disappointed once again.