Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Democracy Volunteers podcast series, Elections Across the World. In this series, we invite guests to talk about the major and most obscure elections that occurred in the world last month.
Speaker: A key theme across elections in July is the question of turnout. In Algeria's recent parliamentary election, only 20% of voters turned up to polling stations.
Speaker: In Slovakia, their referendum on whether to cancel life payments for leaders after their terms expired was invalidated. The referendum needed a turnout of at least 50% to count. It got 16%.
Speaker: meaning that even though the majority of those who did vote supported scrapping the payments, the referendum was made void. In the South, Tomei and Principe presidential election, turnout reached a record low of 41%.
Speaker: In the coming weeks, democracy volunteers will be discussing the possible solutions to decreasing turnout. However, today our focus rests on the Algerian recent election. Later in the podcast, we will hear from Dr. Dalia Hannan, a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund to discuss the election itself.
Speaker: But now we will hear from Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sussex, Martin Evans, to discuss the context for this Algerian election. Firstly, Martin, how are you doing?
Speaker: Yeah, fine. yeah Yeah, really good. Yeah, sort of looking forward to the to the conversation. i think I was saying to you that I was recently on a holiday in Algeria for about three weeks um in March and April with my son. We went camping in the Sahara Desert and we were in the north of Algeria and an amazing country. Not not many people visit it, but a truly amazing country and amazing, warm people. So, yeah, it was nice to see so many friends and made new friends. It was fantastic.
Speaker: oh that sounds amazing i guess a bit of bit of the tourism board for algeria coming out i guess martin getting straight to algerian politics today to understand algerian politics where does this story really start well i think it it's impossible really not to divorce this from um colonialism i i think it's important to remember that uh that Algeria had a very, very particular experience of colonialism. It was exceptionally intense. It was exceptionally violent. The French invaded Algeria in 1830.
Speaker: And the important thing really to remember, suppose there are two things, is that that um Algeria is annexed as an integral part of France, eventually, and there is a large settler population. So this means that nominally, for example,
Speaker: from the 1870s onwards. Algeria is part of the French Third Republic and is part of the French democratic system. Of course, we have to ask ourselves how democratic was the Third Republic? Women were allowed to vote.
Speaker: And of course, the experience of Algerians of, let's say, democracy under colonialism was, in many respects, a very, very negative one in terms of their participation within the the liberal democratic system. During the 1920s and 1930s, there was the emergence of a current, which which bait led by somebody called Fahata Bass, which tried to argue, well, OK, if Algeria is an integral part of France, treat us like equal citizens.
Speaker: And actually, the experience of that was very, very negative. um Assimilation wasn't was was only extended to a veryge very small number of of of Algerians.
Speaker: And then really, after World War two you have a series of elections which are really characterised by continual electoral fraud by the French authorities, where they really go out of their way. to exclude nationalist parties from the from the from from from the electoral system. In fact, that became a French phrase. Algerian-style elections was a kind of um a byword for for for corruption. And I think that helps us to explain why why many Algerians were very, very sceptical about democracy. They thought it was a a facade, a facade for colonial oppression. And it also explains why after the Algerian Revolution, the very violent Algerian Revolution from 1954 to 62, what emerges from that is a a one-party state. They do not embrace a kind of multi-party democracy, the National Liberation Front, the
Speaker: emerges as the the single party, although the real power remains with the with the with the army. And their model is very much one of of revolutionary socialism, um seeing really democracy is something which is which in their minds is associated with with with colonial with colonial domination and very much influenced, I think it'd have to say, the model of the Soviet Union. It's the idea of a planned economic economy.
Speaker: um a rejection of capitalism. And during the 1960s and 1970s, Algeria becomes really one of the leading figures in the Third World um revolutionary way, very closely in light to Cuba. um Algiers is a haven for a whole succession of national liberation movements,
Speaker: cross right across the global south, but particularly in Africa. So um the the African National Congress, South African National Congress is based there. And I think that's very, very important, this idea of a kind of revolutionary a socialist country which clearly allies itself with the Non-Line movement and really, I suppose, with the behind that with the with the with the Soviet Union. So we'd sort of associate democracy at that point with something which is yeah know it's either colonialism or it'ss it's capitalism. And I think that history is very important. So the colonial experience and then this kind of initial kind of revolutionary surge after independence to kind of help us to contextualize um the experience of of democracy within Algeria now.
Speaker: Well, I'm wondering if we could rewind a little bit to the Algerian war for independence and kind of zoom in on firstly, why was it violent and the violence that actually happened? And then what scars did that leave on Algerian political life for the future?
Speaker: Well, i think it's really important just to go back to what i was saying right at the beginning the conversation. So after... After World War II, there are reforms that give Algerians ah the vote, Algerian men.
Speaker: It's a loaded system in the sense that 1947 reforms, they they institute, it's basically a college system whereby the settlers, which are about 1 million, and the Algerians are about 9 million, they have the same number of of elected representatives in this Algerian assembly. so that immediately shows that an Algerian vote is worth much less than a sort of settler vote.
Speaker: Now, that cynicism that emerges towards the electoral system, I think, explains why the FLN doesn't believe that negotiations are going to work, doesn't believe in democratic elections as ah as a way of transforming or ending colonialism.
Speaker: and becomes committed to to violence. And you have the launching of the Algerian Revolution in November 1954, which is committed to Algerian independence. And one of the reasons that that is so violent is because Algeria is an integral part of France.
Speaker: ah the The French, yeah in a in sense, Algeria is no different to Normandy or Brittany, but also you have the presence of one million um French settlers, not just from France, but also from Italy, from Spain, but they have French citizenship.
Speaker: So France finds it very, very difficult to leave, and it's part of the of the trauma. And also... France has very big strategic issue reasons not for leaving France, not least oil and oil oil and gas.
Speaker: So I think the violence of that um revolution is also explained by the disappointment in kind of democracy post-World War II, so that that that Algerian nationalists become committed to violence because they think that the democratic process is always going to be stacked in favour of colonialism.
Speaker: And something that you mentioned about the NFL and a little bit earlier about the one-party system, there's a real the election that's just gone, the NFL had won the election.
Speaker: How have they adapted over the past 60 years in decolonial Algeria? Yeah. Well, think here, the important thing that I think the important issue or event that you have to remember, probably I would still say one of the most important events in in post-Indepence Algeria is in October 1988 there are huge kind of anti-system riots in Algiers in particular but across Algeria and this has been a growing graph there's a growing graph in Morocco as well during the 1980s to do with political alienation a kind of younger generation that is very very suspicious towards the system they feel that the people in power are actually using
Speaker: the narrative of the kind of war of one and a half million martyrs all caught killed by the French as a way of perpetuating perpetuating corruption and perpetuating an unequal system. and They feel very excluded. They feel very excluded.
Speaker: These riots actually lead to something new, which is the emergence of a multi-party system. So so the the president, Chadli Ben-Jadid, he, in the wake of that, introduces a new constitution and um a multi-party system, which lays the basis for the first kind of multi-party elections in Algeria. These take place in 1990, first of all, at the level of local local elections.
Speaker: And um then you have national elections um at the end of 1991 and 1992. Now, the really important factor here is that these multi-party elections become the way in which you see the emergence of an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, which becomes committed to an Islamist Algeria and is anti-FLN, anti-the anti the system.
Speaker: and um After the first round of national elections at the end of 1991, it seems that they are poised for an electoral victory. Actually, i think it's more ambiguous than that. I think the largest actual vote were actually the people that abstained, that in a sense rejected both the Islamists potentially and the system.
Speaker: But the Izmah's appoint for victory, and at that point, the real power in Algeria, which is the army and arguably the kind of the sort of secret police kind of apparatus, they move in to suspend elections. So the suspension of the electoral process in Algeria and the the setting up of ah of ah of a kind of, it's called the kind of special committee, which stops the electoral process because it says it's a threat to algerian algeria the Algerian way of life.
Speaker: So you then have this huge... um hiatus as Algeria becomes embroiled during the 1990s. Algerians talk about it as the black decade, but essentially um groups that dissatisfied with this suspension, this electoral process, they become involved in armed violence against the against the army regime.
Speaker: people talk about it as a civil war i think it's a civil war in the sense that algerians are fighting algerians but i would say it's not a civil war like the spanish civil war where you had two in a sense clearly divided camps that were fighting each other in many respects it's the algerian population that are caught between warring groups whether it's the army or these regimes that are that are fighting them now in this context you have the relaunch of a democratic electoral system. It's in 1995. That really, um there's ah a new president that emerges, somebody called Zeroual, and he realises to sort of really get credibility, they've got they've got to relaunch some kind of democratic participation.
Speaker: He wins, and I think that's one of the key things about the democracy that's emerged in Algeria. Everybody kind of knows who's going to win before the elections take place. But nevertheless, in terms of Zeroual's commitment to try and end the kind of violence in Algeria, it's an endorsement of the regime. And that's really the relaunch of the kind of democratic process, well, inverted commas, democratic process that has characterised Algeria ever since. I think here...
Speaker: This is a phenomenon throughout the world, which is this idea of facile democracy. I think that you see the same thing in Morocco, where actually the system seems to have decided who's going to win in advance.
Speaker: The result is increasing alienation of voters. So we would see, and it's interesting to compare that with Morocco um over the last 20 years, where increasingly populations do not vote because they don't believe that this is actually genuine participation with the people.
Speaker: That's so interesting, Martin, and kind of gives us context to our later conversation with Dahlia about why why this turnout is so low. I guess looking to the more recent pass for Algeria, can you explain for our listeners what the Algerian Iraq is and what its influence on Algerian politics has been?
Speaker: I think to really understand the Iraq, I would say that it that that probably the roots are going back to what I was talking about in the 1980s. So this idea of a divorce, between the system, often called in French, le pouvoir, and the people. I think that was very, particularly a younger generation, this kind of sense of alienation, um a sense that there is a kind of like game that's being played at the kind of level of the Algerian state between different clans and people don't really understand it. And they kind of are disinterested and want to get in ah on on on their lives.
Speaker: in In terms of going back to, um so Zerawal is elected in 1995, and then he is kind of forced to stand down by the system, inside of in the system in 1998.
Speaker: And you have new elect presidential elections in 1999. And the person that emerges is actually a veteran National Liberation Front politician with a high international profile called Abdelaziz Bouteflika. And Bouteflika wins. Again, in dubious circumstances, the other presidential candidates withdraw, but he wins.
Speaker: And that's really one of the key things to understand the origin of the Kharak movement. is because basically he doesn't want to stop being president.
Speaker: And um in the meantime, of course, you've had the the events of 9-11, the United States with their war on terror looking for partners. in the Middle East and North Africa. The Algerians have experience of fighting Islamist terrorism and kind of Bouteflika, who is arguably isolated because of the kind of electoral fraud, you know, gets really endorsed by the United States. And then what you have is a kind of series of elections where Bouteflika wins again,
Speaker: And again, but he has serious health problems. And the the kind of trigger for the Iraq movement in 2019 is with the presidential elections, the idea that Butterflick, who's not been seen in in in in public for many years, is clearly very, very ill.
Speaker: And it's the idea that the entourage behind him is using him to basically fleece the country. And the idea that this person is going to be the presidential candidate again, which is what he's announced in April 2, this is a final straw for for for ordinary Algerians.
Speaker: And what's really interesting is that many people thought, because Algeria doesn't really figure greatly in the kind of Arab revolutions of 2011, it does momentarily. And many people said that was because of this trauma of the black decade, that Algerians were basically too frightened by the consequences of political activism.
Speaker: And the regime played on this. It was always like, what do you want? It's either us or Islamist terrorism. And suddenly there is huge demonstrations, incredible demonstrations um across across Algeria, ah which were which were calling for Bouteflika to stand down, which he did. So that was one victory.
Speaker: And we're calling for a meaningful meaningful change. And... um Really, what emerges from that, and I remember was in Algeria in 2019, and I went to a football match. I'm a big Algerian football fan. It was MC Iran against Mooludu de Kasbah. And what was very, very noticeable there was all of the male young men who clearly feel alienated from the system. So there's not many women that go to football matches in Algeria.
Speaker: but were all shouting down the sort of the what they saw as the strong man of the regime, so it's Gait Salah, who subsequently died. So it's this idea that the regime... is not properly democratic because behind them there are the real deciders located in the army. And everybody knows that these are the people that make the decisions.
Speaker: um He dies. He dies. And it's really out of that that you get the election of the first president, Tabun. And Tabun, I suppose, there are two things here.
Speaker: Like many other regimes, the situation there they're saved by COVID. Obviously, COVID keeps people in. And I think that the Algerian system uses that as a way of kind of reasserting, or that or that really is one of the factors which explains why the Hirak movement doesn't kind of maintain its momentum.
Speaker: And then Tabun tries to present himself as being the true inheritor of the Hirak movement. So the the the legislative elections in 2021
Speaker: after he's become president. He tries to really fashion a narrative where it's the idea, I represent the new Algeria, the new Algeria, the changed Algeria. And it's interesting at that point that there is a kind of slight improvement in, you know, there are people do vote, not not massively, but compared to the recent elections, I think there's much more of a sense of of ah of polite belief. And also the system allows independent candidates to to to stand. This is the idea of a kind of a renewal of the system.
Speaker: So I think that's interesting that he tries to, you could say, appropriate this language of of of like, I am the face of change. I'm the face of the Iraq movement. Of course, at the same time, many of the Iraq activists are being repressed by the Algerian algeean regime.
Speaker: I think that's really how to explain... why the hirak movement in a way dissipates it is the impact of covid the appropriation by the kind of the the president and then sort of like there's kind of arguments also amongst members of the hirak movement what what should the hirak movement do what is it trying to do was it just about stopping butaflika was it about changing the system but i think what is interesting about the hirak movement is omnipresence Within Algeria, actually, the biggest the regime's biggest fear is that there will be a huge popular demonstrations about this dissatisfaction, which is clearly felt by large numbers of Algerians, that they feel that the system is is is is is is stacked against them, stacked against them.
Speaker: I guess coming to the end of our conversation now, it's been absolutely fantastic, Martin. Looking at the almost dissolution of the Herak movement, do you think any part of that is the fear of the black decade still? And do you think the low turnout in the recent election kind of mirrors that same fear in a way that it's ah it's a peaceful kind of almost belief that you don't believe that the system can help you?
Speaker: I think what is interesting about the Iraq movement is it I think it broke... this this notion that many commentators had the Algerian society had become paralysed by the Black Decade. And the Black Decade was horrendous. let's Honestly, horrendous. Absolutely horrendous violence.
Speaker: Horrendous um violence on all sides. I mean, large numbers of people don't really know what happened. There's there's still very, very much about that decade that we don't sort of understand and the regime has kind of outlawed anybody that wants to critically reassess that that's actually against the law to actually do that so the the regime itself through a series of laws has really tried to control that narrative and it's presented that narrative as one basically it was the it was the algerian democratic system versus the islamists and um
Speaker: I think that's sort of like far too simplistic. So I think the Herak movement was so exciting because it represented a break of what we thought this paralyzed society. And um I think that the sentiments of the Herak movement are still there and are felt by large numbers of of of of of Algerians. And I think that what the the recent elections show through the the kind of enormous, know, I mean, many people say as many people as 80% didn't vote, is that there is a huge sort of divorce between
Speaker: between um the political system and um I would say the mass of ordinary ordinary Algerians. And the system is able to buy social peace because of the of the of the kind of money it makes from oil and gas, which it's benefited from. That's of the dividends of the of the sort of Ukraine war. So it can appease people It can appease people like that. It also plays a kind of, at time to time, a very strong anti-French card and also very strong anti-Moroccan card as well in terms of of of of of of a kind of Algerian patriotism or or nationalism.
Speaker: But I do feel that what the recent elections show more than anything else is is is is the kind of huge gulf there is between the kind of the political institutions. i mean, large numbers of Algerians that would present themselves with independent candidates, were they were not allowed to stand.
Speaker: And I think that gives you, and that was under a law that had been introduced in April, only in April, which allowed the system to basically vet the independent candidates, but also to really control and kind of intervene in terms of of of the strategies of of of of political parties. and this isn't really um This isn't really democracy, it seems it seems seems to me, or or people are not being treated like citizens, citizens, really.
Speaker: Well, thank you very much, Martin, for that conversation. It was really interesting. Thank you. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot. Now we are joined by Dr. Dalia Hannon, a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Dalia, I feel like you can give us some insight into the recent election for Algeria.
Speaker: I wonder for our listeners who may not not have known this election was even happening, what options did Algerians have when they went to the polls last month? Well, thank you for having me first.
Speaker: ah Well, ah the ballot saw a crowded political landscape right on paper and on paper, it was just perfect, but a very structured political landscape was ah in practice. so let me walk you through that.
Speaker: What happened is that the established loyalist, what I call the loyalist trio, which is the pro-government you know majority, reasserted its power, its control on the parliament. So we are talking about three parties. The first one is the National Liberation Front, the FLN, which is the historical political party in Algeria that was already back during the war against ah the French. It secured a plurality of seats with 90 seats, followed by its traditional ally, some would say its clone, which is the R&D, which stands for the rally ah for the National Democratic Rally, which secured 73 seats.
Speaker: And finally, Mustaqbal Party, which secured 59 seats. Meanwhile, traditional opposition forces were heavily squeezed into this political arena. The main Islamist party, which is the MSP, the Movement for Society and Peace, ah had dropped over 20 seats down to 43, while independent candidate lists plummeted very seriously from their previous high down to 32 seats. So what we also saw, which is very important to talk about, is the return of the traditional secularist ah parties.
Speaker: We are talking here about the FFS, which stands for the Socialist Forces Front, the Rally for Culture and Democracy, RCD, as well as the traditional worker party, the Parti des Travailleurs, PT of Louisa Hinnon, who won a marginal footprint of 12, 4, and 3 seats respectively.
Speaker: But again, make no mistake, the participation was about political survival for the boycotters. Why? Because these political parties used to boycott all election, but under the new electoral rule, missing two consecutive election triggers party dissolution.
Speaker: So basically for them, playing in a heavily constrained political arena was a tax on survival. If you want to continue to exist, you will need then to play the game even if the rules of the game or even if the game is rigged.
Speaker: So in a nutshell, on paper, Algerian voters had dozens of parties to choose from, but in practice, the real choice was between institutional continuity and quiet disengagement.
Speaker: And I guess that's a theme. I guess the big kind of headline of the Algerian election is the 20% turnout. I guess thinking more broadly about the major takeaways from the election, I wonder if you could give some insight for our listeners.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. So I think the first takeaway is to see that this 80% is... is the Algerians boycotting the ballot, showing that they are not politically fatigued or disengaged. On the opposite, they are saying, we are not going to offer you the legitimacy that you are asking for. The first takeaway, major takeaway. The second takeaway, and we'll talk about it later, but I believe that the Hiraq did not really disappear. In a way, the Hiraq morphed from
Speaker: the weakly heavy ah mobilization and demonstration to a quiet silence, passive boycott. You want us, you do not want us to go on the street,
Speaker: but we will not go to the ballot. So I would say that the third takeaway is obvious, which is the how powerful is the executive branch? The parliament is just basically this chamber that validate the decision of the executive. And this is why Algerians don't take the parliament that seriously because they know that you know they they only validate the decision of the executive And this is why also they simply preferred not to show up and to ah go to the ballot.
Speaker: And this will explain the 80%.
Speaker: So Dalia, moving on to what is, I guess, that we talked about earlier, the headline of this election. 80%, well, 20% turnout for the election. Why is turnout so low? And what are the implications of this for the parliament that ah now technically has a mandate?
Speaker: Yes, so the official, let's focus first on the official narrative, how the ah government and the regime presented this election right. So the official narrative coming out of Algiers is ah point to institutional completion and modernization.
Speaker: To say it in a different way, this is the regime saying, we are now folding the page of the 2019 hiraq. This era is over and this is the era of Al-Jazair Al-Jadida, which means this is the era of the new Algeria, right?
Speaker: So they presented this as a completion of, you know, institutional completion, modernization, highlighting, for instance, one of the things that they insisted on was that ah over 4,600 candidates held university degree, which is a new thing indeed. So they are presenting it as a proof of qualitative shift.
Speaker: Look, we have more professional and, you know, educated people, which is true. To a certain extent, it is true. But the real story, as you said, is the overwhelming 80% who did not bother to go to the ballot, who stayed home or went to the beach because it's summer season in Algeria, right?
Speaker: So that 80% abstention rate for me isn't an accident. You know, in Algeria, polls shows that less than 2% of Algerians youth trust political parties and only 5% of them belong to a political party. So youth aren't sending a subtle tactical message. They are turning out the electoral Ritual entirely.
Speaker: So this massive disengagement, what does it mean? What does it demonstrate? As I said, it demonstrates first of all that the hiraq is not really dead. It's just morphed into a more silence passive form of boycott.
Speaker: But voters recognize also that parliament remains structurally subordinate to the executive branch. So in a way, what matters for them is their daily socioeconomic urgencies. Can you solve our problem? If not, then why should I bother and go to vote?
Speaker: right So by withholding their presence, the Algerian citizen effectively denied the assembly domestic legitimacy.
Speaker: And simply put, I would say that the Algerian citizen do not believe in the parliament. And by not you know bothering to go to the ballot box, it is saying that you know this is an eco-chamber and I don't have to validate or to give it legitimacy.
Speaker: And so you said something really interesting about the youth being particularly dysentered disinterested. why Why is the youth more disinterested than, say, older generations and have that sense that Parliament cannot fix their problems?
Speaker: because they experienced firsthand. you know Throughout history, we've had so many elections, again, which is a feature of you know this ah ah democracy that we see.
Speaker: But again, the Algerian citizen ah cares about whether you know, education is free and good for his children, whether the electricity and the price of the internet is good, whether his socio-economic condition are enhanced and are met.
Speaker: And they know that the parliament has nothing to do with that because they see also the parliament as a bunch of psychophants that are just there, you know, to get their big salary and not to change their daily lives.
Speaker: And so now kind of looking to the effect of these elections and the lack of turnout, to what extent do these elections undermine the Algerian government and stop the National Liberation Front enacting the policies that they want?
Speaker: I think, you know, um it doesn't undermine really the Algerian government. ah First of all, logistic logistically and procedurally, the state election machinery runs smoothly and pretty well and this and peacefully. this is This has to be said and acknowledged because we are sitting in a country that witnessed a decade of civil war ah because of the interruption of an election in 1991 that caused you know Algeria um you know having this ah horrific civil war that lasted a decade, you know triggered the death of
Speaker: 150,000 people, the the disappearance of 7,000 and $20 billion dollars in material damage. So again, when you have an election that runs smoothly and peacefully, this needs to be acknowledged. Polling station operated, security was maintained, and and technical protocols were followed. However, I think the contrast was between administrative efficiency which Algeria reached right and public participation.
Speaker: The administration delivered textbook logistical process and that's great again ah but administrative organization alone is not sufficient and cannot manufacture political enthusiasm. So you need to make sure that your population gives you legitimacy for the actions that you are running.
Speaker: ah Again, for the Afalan, though, to come back to the Afalan, the Afalan will spin it and is already spinning it. As you know, this victory, it's 90 seats. You know, it's a definitive victory for the Afalan. It's a definitive mandate for the AFA land, a validation also of President Boon New Algeria, aljaze e aljadida dokinin as the loyalist coalition formalize its you know parliamentary majority and upcoming cabinet adjustment take shape. Three major dynamics will define the late state.
Speaker: And this is more important than the parliament. It's beyond, right? So I think the first major dynamic is socioeconomic pressure. Recent IMF reviews highlight that the regime is running a double digit subsidized, a double sorry.
Speaker: Recent IMF reviews highlight that the regime is running double digit um fiscal deficit around 10.5%. And this is a huge of the GDP. Largely to do what? To subsidize social peace, right?
Speaker: And manage soaring food prices. So President Tabun recently reiterated his ah commitment to gradually increase, for instance, civil servant salaries, the minimum wage, and retirement pension for ah senior citizens heading to 2026 and 2027.
Speaker: to soften the blow of inflation, right, and preserve the purchasing power of Algerians. ah But again, because this parliament doesn't have the legitimacy of, you know, a parliament, it cannot act as a social buffer.
Speaker: And so what does it mean? It means that if inflation, for instance, you know, get higher, this will trigger a reaction from, you know, because of the economic friction.
Speaker: And then the parliament will not be able to play its role. So this is on the socioeconomic level. Now on the post-election governance, I think this is a very important point because um the presidency is holding ministries accountable for their economic portfolios.
Speaker: And this is, I wouldn't say a first, but I would say this is very important because, you know, corruption is very high and the presidency is holding ministries for, for instance, whether you know ah they evaluate, for instance, ah whether they deliver the infrastructure, how good are the infrastructure, they deliver whether the trade and the diversification of the economy is you know walking towards the right path, the market regulation. So there is a governance that is changing slowly but surely.
Speaker: And this is also something that we need to look at. And finally, and this is my yeah ah my weak spot, foreign policy and security.
Speaker: uh on the international stage a core theme in uh which is uh you know in my upcoming book called algeria on the global stage the paradox of influence i talk about how algeria is facing ah different and diverse intense regional transformation uh including border security within the sahel and ongoing diplomatic realignment with European partners. We've seen last week Pedro Sanchez from Spain coming into Algeria. We've seen the reaction of Morocco a few days later with what happened in Serta. And so again, this is a country that is a giant.
Speaker: This is a country that has all the assets to be a regional power. And unfortunately, Algeria is still punching below its weight. And this is what I'm talking about in my new book. But this is a country also that is trying to come back on the regional arena and to show the region, but also the world, that Algeria that was once called and the Mecca of revolutionaries is back into the game.
Speaker: I think that's all we have time for. Thank you so much, Jalia, for offering your insight into the Algerian election. And I guess just there touching on what the future holds for Algeria.
Speaker: But you can watch or listen to the Democracy Volunteers podcast across all your major streaming apps. I've been your host, Joshua Paisley, and thank you for listening. Thank you.
