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Toward the Referendum: Promoting an Open Debate

The text of the Charter unveiled on August 15 is a document dictated from above, rather than the product of any process of formal consultation with the Algerian public. Except for meetings that the president’s Ad Hoc Commission on the Disappeared held with families of the “disappeared,” — and which were themselves controversial³⁰ — the drafting of the Charter involved no formal consultations with victims of human rights violations about their demands and aspirations.

The Charter fulfills the pledge of President Bouteflika, made in his speech of October 31, 2004, to seek the people’s approval for a general amnesty to consolidate “national reconciliation.”  An officially encouraged, months-long national mobilization in favor of a general amnesty kicked into high gear soon after the October 31 speech, even before anyone knew the details of the president’s plan.  This campaign included a National Council for the General Amnesty, with former president Ahmed Ben Bella as its honorary head. (That body reportedly renamed itself the National Council for Peace and National Reconciliation immediately after the President unveiled his Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation.)

Algerians now have an opportunity to vote for or against the Charter.  It is hard to see how an informed, deliberative national discussion of such an important initiative can take place in the space of the forty-five days between publication of the text and the referendum.  (This is the minimum period required by Article 168 of the election law.³¹)

A number of factors have hindered public discussion up to this point and threaten to chill debate in the weeks prior to the referendum.

First, Algeria’s media is unlikely to promote a full and wide-ranging public consideration of the Charter.  The state-controlled television and radio have until now largely ignored critics of the general amnesty proposal and of the state’s handling of the issue of the “disappeared.”  Some of Algeria’s privately owned dailies have done a far better job of reporting criticisms and questions about the amnesty project, but their readership is limited and they continue to face pressure from authorities. Since President Bouteflika’s re-election in April 2004, the government has prosecuted a number of editors, journalists and cartoonists for articles and commentary critical of the president and other high officials.

Second, Algerians continue to live under a thirteen-year-old state of emergency that limits civil liberties. For example, the emergency law empowers the minister of interior and governors (the wali) to ban any public gathering deemed likely to disturb the public order and peace.³² Authorities have prevented some organizations critical of the government, like the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, from holding meetings in public halls.  The government has resisted calls to lift the state of emergency, and it is not mentioned in the Charter, even though the Charter proclaims that terrorism — the supposed basis for the law of exception — has been largely vanquished:  “Terrorism has been, by the grace of God, the All-mighty and Compassionate, combated and brought under control throughout the national territory, which has experienced a restoration of peace and security.”

Third, the president himself has actively discouraged debate by attacking those who criticize the tenets of the Charter.  In his speech on August 14, the day before it was unveiled, he said,

There are those, voices we know, who will no doubt try to block this popular and legitimate aspiration, this profound wish for peace, this search of ours for a national reconciliation that will enable Algeria to recover the strength of its national unity that enabled it to oppose its enemies through the ages.

Those voices will no doubt be the same ones that, at home and abroad, stood by in silence when our flesh and our souls were ravaged by horrible bloodbaths.  Their guilty silence yesterday disqualifies them from standing as arbiters of the sovereign public will, just as they already were discredited in their vain attempts to block the Civil Harmony.

Some of the President’s closest allies have adopted this kind of divisive and intimidating rhetoric since the plan was unveiled, including Abdelaziz Belkhadem, secretary-general of the National Liberation Front party, which is part of the ruling coalition.  Urging a yes vote, Belkhadem said on national television on August 21, “Some persons have an interest in feeding the fire of discord so that our country will not regain its stability.  More than ever, we are being summoned to mobilize public opinion against those voices both inside Algeria and abroad.”³³

Honest people can disagree about the merits and the terms of an amnesty, and how to rehabilitate victims following years of bloodshed.  Algerians must find their own formula, ideally following a national debate that is informed, unfettered, and unrushed. Regrettably, the president’s preemptive attacks on those who would criticize the Charter chill debate rather than encourage it.

Yet even if the national debate and referendum were to happen under ideal circumstances, they cannot become the vehicle for depriving human rights victims or other Algerians of their internationally recognized rights. Those rights are not subject to a majority vote, no matter how free or democratic it may be.