Algeria is currently going through a pivotal period in its political history, marked by the clear return of the army to the management of civilian affairs. This development is part of a process that has been underway since the fall of Bouteflika in 2019, and which has seen the military regime gradually consolidate its hold on civilian institutions while maintaining an increasingly fragile democratic façade.
This analysis is based on the observation of a dual dynamic: on the one hand, a strengthening of praetorian control over political and civil life, and on the other, the regime's growing inability to maintain its legitimacy and effectively manage political transitions. The Tebboune presidency is a perfect illustration of this trend, with a weakened civil power unable to emancipate itself from military tutelage and respond to popular aspirations expressed during the 2019 Hirak.
Tebboune's second term looks set to be a continuation of the status quo, characterized by increased repression of public freedoms, unsustainable rentier economic management, and an inability to renew political personnel. This situation augurs new political turbulence, particularly around the question of presidential succession, in a context where the regime seems to have exhausted its ability to reinvent itself while maintaining its authoritarian fundamentals.
From the fall of Bouteflika to the election of Tebboune: reconfigurations of the politico-military system
The fall of Abdelaziz Bouteflika's regime has redrawn part of the Algerian political equation. In 2019, the then-old and bedridden president, encouraged by his entourage and supporters, was set to run for a fifth term. He was forced to give it up, pushed by popular pressure, embodied by the February 2019 Hirak.
If this project for a fifth mandate was able to take root, it was probably due to the inability of the various factions that make up the regime to agree on a new candidate. The year 2018 was marked by numerous political and security hiccups that illustrated the dissensions within the regime.
In the summer of 2018, for example, the case of Kamel Chikhi, known as "the Butcher", shook large sections of the Algerian security establishment. This meat importer was accused of smuggling a cargo of 700 kilograms of cocaine via the port of Oran. As a result of this affair, a number of military figures, including five major generals and the head of the police (himself a general), were arrested, despite their rank, which until then had served as a free pass. More anecdotally, Abdelmadjid Tebboune's son was also imprisoned in connection with the affair, only to be released a few months after his father's election. At the time, these arrests were interpreted as a desire on the part of the then Chief of Staff, General Ahmed Gaid Salah, who was loyal to Bouteflika before turning against him, to wipe the slate clean of potential threats.
On the political front, 2018 also revealed the unease of some in power about Bouteflika's renewal. The MSP (Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix, Islamist), a co-opted opposition party with government responsibilities until 2012, proposed postponing the presidential elections and organizing a vague "national conference". This attempt to break the political deadlock into which Bouteflika's state of health was plunging the country met with only very limited success. At the time, the status quo had the advantage of freezing the already familiar balance of power.
The year 2019 was marked by lively political protest, which found its form in the Hirak. Starting in February 2019, numerous protests began to shake the country, challenging the Bouteflika clan's plan for a fifth term and calling more broadly for a change in the nature of Algerian governance, including a transition to a "civilian, not military state".
On 26 March 2019, General Gaid Salah called for the application of Article 102 of the Algerian Constitution, which simply means Bouteflika's resignation or removal from office. In April 2019, Gaid Salah became the real strongman of Algerian political life. Despite the army's major influence on political decisions, the military command has always been careful to hide behind a civilian façade. Although the Constitution provides for an interim period to be filled by Abdelkader Bensalah, President of the Council of the Nation (Senate), it was indeed General Gaid Salah who set the tone for political life in almost weekly televised speeches.
Knowing and understanding what the Hirak was demanding had been at the heart of exchanges between military power and civil society throughout 2019. Indeed, following Bouteflika's resignation on 2 April, the army – or at least the faction represented by General Gaid Salah – immediately pushed for the organization of presidential elections "as soon as possible". The army considered that, since the main objective of the Hirak had now been achieved, the mass protests no longer made sense and it was time to continue along the road to a conventional electoral process, initially set for July 2019. This "roadmap" was widely rejected by the Hirak protesters, prompting interim President Bensalah to cancel the election.
Throughout the summer of 2019, Karim Younes, former President of the National Assembly, was asked by the authorities to lead a dialogue and mediation panel. This panel, made up of public figures, some of whom are known to have held government posts, would call on the authorities to put an end to police violence during demonstrations or to release arrested demonstrators. If interim President Bensalah offered an attentive ear to these demands, General Gaid Salah declared his refusal to accept "diktats" and ordered the panel to continue its work and suggest the holding of a new presidential election, dictating the conclusion of a "dialogue" that will have been largely one-sided.
In September 2019, following conclusions dictated by the Military Staff, the army imposed the election date of 12 December. The organization of this election was a moment of truth for assessing the balance of power within the various factions of the regime. Indeed, throughout the election, Azzedine Mihoubi, Bouteflika's former minister, was seen as the candidate of part of the army, supported by General Wassini Bouazza, head of the internal security service. Right up to the last moment, the election that brought Tebboune to power was uncertain. Barely a few days after his election, Tebboune watched helplessly as Gaid Salah, his main sponsor within the regime, died.
This locked electoral process, featuring five candidates close to the government, was intended to be a moment of major re-legitimization of the regime. However, the result was the most boycotted election in the history of pluralist elections in Algeria.
The day after his "victory", Abdelmadjid Tebboune thanked the "blessed Hirak" who had freed the country from the "Issaba" (gang, with reference to Bouteflika and his entourage) and dedicated a new public holiday to commemorate the cohesion between the army and the people. This rhetoric illustrates how the authorities have tried to digest the demands of the Hirak and deny any legitimacy to the protests that continued after the December 2019 election.
The Hirak waned significantly in February 2020 with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has made any prospect of demonstrations impossible and paved the way for heavy repression. Throughout 2019, the Hirak enabled the creation of a genuine peaceful balance of power with those in power. Unfortunately, the long history of political infiltration and manipulation of social movements, and the lack of political culture among the new generation of activists, have led the Hirak to refuse all forms of representation, including within the intermediary bodies that should normally have played this role. This refusal prevented the political translation of the balance of power that emerged in the streets.
Abdelmajid Tebboune's "New Algeria": The regime's authoritarian takeover
It is hard to characterize Abdelmajid Tebboune's record as anything other than the maintenance of a mortifying status quo, coupled with a praetorian takeover of the political field. Historically, moments of change in the regime's civilian façade have been moments of reconfiguration of the balance of power. Without changing the praetorian nature of the regime, they have altered the clan-based balance of power within the regime, which is notorious for being particularly opaque.
Since its election, the new civilian government, embodied by President Tebboune and his entourage, has struggled to find a political base. Unlike Bouteflika, who refused to be "a three-quarter president", it would appear that President Tebboune has no desire to challenge the praetorians for pre-eminence in political decision-making. He regularly appears with the new Military Chief of Staff, whether during military exercises or, more unexpectedly, during sporting victories, such as the celebrations of Algeria's victory in the Arab Football Cup.
The president's docility masks his inability to rely on political forces loyal to him, including those traditionally associated with the regime. While Bouteflika enjoyed the support of all the regime's satellite organizations, the most emblematic, such as the National Organization of Moudjahidines (ONM) and the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA), did not support Tebboune for his first term. Tebboune's difficulty in relying on these loyal forces is mainly because his election did not meet with consensus within the army. This explains the cautious stance taken by the traditional clientele; they awaited the subtle power struggles between the various factions of "decision-makers".
In terms of support, Abdelmadjid Tebboune continues to rely on the regime's traditional parties, such as the Front de Libération National (FLN) and the Rassemblement National pour la Démocratie (RND), even though these are largely discredited, with the backing of the domesticated Islamist current. The latter has won comfortable concessions: access to privileges for its notables, the eradication of the French language in favor of English, and the maintenance of a recurrent diplomatic crisis with France. Unable to create new relays as it once did, the regime is in a structural impasse. This loss of political engineering is often attributed by commentators to the departure of various army executives, including former General Toufik, head of the intelligence services and chief organizer of political life since the early 1990s.
In terms of political action, the civil power proclaims the advent of the "new Algeria", Abdelmadjid Tebboune's trademark, as opposed to the Algeria of Bouteflika, to distinguish the presidential action from that of his predecessor, to whom he was one of the most faithful. However, it would be hard for a keen observer of Algerian politics to find any substance in this slogan. From the point of view of those in power, this break is reflected in the disappearance of the notables of the old regime, the declared fight against corruption, and the desire to recover the money looted by the oligarchs of the Bouteflika era. While some figures from the old regime have been imprisoned, corruption remains widespread, and only those who benefit from it have changed. Moreover, beyond the figures announced on television, no proof has been put forward as to the recovery of the capital embezzled by the oligarchs.
This "new Algeria" was to find its consecration on two key dates. Firstly, from a domestic point of view, with the organization of a constitutional referendum in 2020. The main changes introduced are the formal recognition of the role of the "blessed Hirak" in the preamble to the Constitution, the designation of the Prime Minister’s position as belonging to the parliamentary majority, and the curtailment of freedoms, particularly freedom of conscience, which is no longer guaranteed as in the previous Constitution. This latest constitutional revision (the last was in 2016) was the culmination of the regime's absorption of the Hirak's demands. The referendum saw little success, with an official turnout of 23%. Secondly, from an international point of view, Algeria's bid to join the BRICS, initially set for 2023, ended in failure. This setback underlines the amateurism of the ruling class and the limitations of slogan-based politics.
Beyond the official clichés about the "new Algeria", the regime's new civil façade seems incapable of having any real influence on the administration. In various speeches, for example, President Tebboune has attacked the administrative bottleneck, particularly regarding productive investment, giving the impression of a pilot with an unresponsive dashboard.
One of the main features of this "new Algeria" is probably the regime’s muscular takeover of the political, media, and civil spheres. Stymied by a major peaceful protest during the Hirak, the regime has considerably reduced the scope of the various areas of expression and public freedoms. For example, the High Security Council, a consultative body made up of government ministries and army representatives, declared Rachad (Islamist) and MAK (Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia) political movements as terrorists, despite their non-violent actions, and dissolved legal parties such as the PST (Socialist Workers' Party, Trotskyist) and the MDS (Democratic and Social Movement, ex-communist).
Far from stopping at the partisan political arena, this security takeover also extended to the associative and media fields. Numerous associations such as RAJ (Rassemblement Action Jeunesse), the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH), and the Catholic charity Caritas were dissolved. Many media outlets considered independent (Le Soir d'Algérie, El Watan, Liberté) were brought to heel through public advertising pressure or forced into closure (Liberté)
Finally, Ali Ghediri, a retired major-general who publicly called on Gaid Salah not to support Bouteflika in 2018 and was a candidate in the aborted presidential election of April 2019, remains in prison since June 2019. This persistent crackdown reflects the regime’s tense state as it was accustomed to settling conflicts in secret when it comes to a personality from its ranks who has entered into a form of public dissent.
Thus, the regime's security takeover mainly reflects the desire to control the political and social field, after a year 2019 characterized by intense upheavals. Whereas the Bouteflika period was characterized by considerable room for critical expression, the praetorians in power are aware of the weakness of the embodiment provided by Tebboune and the fragility of their situation. These two factors explain the reduction in the scope of public freedoms and the muzzling of all voices critical of the government.
Finally, as the system has demonstrated its inability to manage structural arbitrations, such as the choice of the next President of the Republic, this stiffening also enables the concentration of power in the hands of a handful of generals who are responsible for internal security affairs.
This return to praetorian control, which reflects a feverishness in the regime, also found expression in the latest presidential elections of 2024. Indeed, the political sequence that culminated in last September's elections illustrated (i) the praetorians' return to control of civil life, and (ii) the regime's inability to recreate consensus between its various decision-making centers.
The September 2024 elections: Stopping the fraud machine
One of the special features of the September 2024 election is that it was an early presidential election. Indeed, in March 2024, the President announced his intention to bring forward the election date by two months. At the time, the official Algerian Press Service (APS) agency welcomed "a return to electoral normality and democratic standards", which was to mark the regime's "emergence from crisis".
This decision plunged a large part of the political class and observers into a state of incomprehension, leading to lengthy speculation as to the reasons behind this choice. Experienced analysts, such as Prof. Ali Bensaad, saw it as a sign of a military takeover of civilian life, with the election of a president from the ranks of the army, following the example of Sissi's Egypt. The prediction turned out to be wrong, but it was nonetheless credible at the time it was made.
While it is clear that the Algerian army remains the central authority in political decision-making within a cryptocratic, praetorian regime, it has gradually reclaimed control over large areas of civilian life that had been nominally beyond its reach since October 1988. Thus, on 27 June 2024, a presidential decree extended the appointment of military personnel to civilian public administrations in sensitive and strategic sectors. Although the decree does not specify these sectors, many military personnel have found themselves appointed to lead public companies such as Algérie Ferries and SGSIA (airports).
From a political point of view, although many candidates had declared their candidacy, only three were selected. Indeed, according to the reasons put forward, established figures in Algerian political life, such as the Workers' Party (PT) candidate Louisa Hanoune (previously a candidate in three presidential elections), failed to gather the necessary sponsorship signatures to run. Other candidates have been prosecuted for purchasing sponsorships, limiting electoral options to their simplest expression since 1999. In reality, only two organized parties – the secular, socialist FFS and the Islamist MSP – were allowed to field candidates of limited influence, whose mere names struggled to survive in an electoral campaign that was effectively on life support.
The election results are particularly bizarre. A first wave of results was announced by ANIE (Autorité nationale indépendante des élections), which announced a Brejnev-era landslide win for Abdelmadjid Tebboune, with 94.65% of the vote, compared with 3.17% and 2.16% respectively for the other two candidates. An "average turnout" of 48% was announced, in an original calculation that amused observers. The Constitutional Court subsequently invalidated these figures, making adjustments exceeding 10 points: President Tebboune was ultimately declared elected with 84% of the vote.
This unusual procedure in the history of independent Algeria illustrates that even electoral fraud, usually carried out with dexterity, is becoming a delicate task. One possible explanation is the lack of consensus among decision-makers on the renewal of the president-candidate. Another hypothesis could simply be the desire to maintain a civil façade of weak legitimacy, which is clearly subservient to the praetorians.
In any case, the 2024 election illustrates the inability of Abdelmadjid Tebboune's team to make its mark, even among the regime's traditional clientele, notably among associations, unions, and satellite organizations (ONM, UGTA, employers' union, youth associations, zaouias). As Hasni Abidi, a professor at the University of Geneva, rightly pointed out, "he [Tebboune]has won just 319,000 votes since 2019, and has had just over 5 million voters out of 24 million registered, i.e. less than a quarter. This failure calls for a thorough overhaul of his policies.”
There are several reasons for this meager result. Firstly, from a political point of view, it is clear that Tebboune has had difficulty in formulating an innovative project and a coherent vision that could win support. Most of the inaugurations held during his first term of office were linked to projects begun under the Bouteflika era, with lengthy delivery times, demonstrating the regime's inability to articulate structuring infrastructure projects. These achievements ("indjazates") are, however, one of the key elements put forward in official propaganda to justify Algeria's economic progress.
On the economic front, although Tebboune has opened the taps on the redistribution of rents (allowances for the unemployed, launch of a new subsidized housing program, etc.), the daily economic situation of Algerians continues to deteriorate. Indeed, they have to cope with the high inflation affecting their currency, as well as difficult access to various consumer goods such as cars, due to import restrictions and the lack of alternatives on offer. Finally, it is doubtful whether Tebboune actually enjoys the support of the military and security apparatus, which explains why the regime's usual support bodies are only timidly backing him.
What are the prospects for Abdelmadjid Tebboune's second term?
Following his re-election, Tebboune continues to pledge to the army his non-interference in the military management of the country's political affairs. In this respect, the recent parade organized on 1 November to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolution against French colonial rule, illustrates the pre-eminence retained by the praetorians within the regime. The new government that was announced on 18 November sees the arrival of Miltary Chief of Staff Said Chengriha as Deputy Minister of National Defense – a constant in the government's composition which seemed to have been overlooked when Chengriha took office when he was only acting Military Chief of Staff.
Although a number of prisoners of conscience were released in the wake of the 1 November celebrations, many continue to languish in the regime's jails. The fundamentals of the rentier pact, based on an uncompetitive, closed economy and structural dependence on hydrocarbons, are pushing the country further and further into an economic impasse.
In the absence of major domestic successes, the regime continues to use international politics to consolidate its legitimacy. Thus, the rhetoric of "the hand of foreigners" threatening the country, or the need to "consolidate the internal front" (although it is not clear which front this refers to), represents the recycling of largely discarded elements of political discourse. The latter consists in developing a narrative around the "mentality of the besieged", to build internal political capital. In 2023, the attempt to join the BRICS received personal political backing from the President. This failed attempt demonstrated the discrepancy between Algeria's actual international weight and the leaders’ perception of it, who are themselves hostage to a Third World rhetoric not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. To add insult to injury, Algeria ended up joining the New BRICS Development Bank, with a capital contribution of $1.5 billion, even though the country has never resorted to external debt for its financing. In short, an extremely costly marketing operation aimed at erasing the setback suffered by Algerian diplomacy and its President.
Today, President Tebboune is struggling to formulate a five-year vision that goes beyond the strict distribution of rents. Parliament has just approved the budget with the highest level of public deficit in its history, enshrining the authorities’ headlong rush as a mode of government. More worrying for its survival, the system is no longer able to produce political figures capable of ensuring the proper conduct of business.
Since he acceded to power, Abdelmadjid Tebboune has been unable to bring to the fore any political personalities likely to act as relays, if not in society, then at least in the usual clientele of power. He continues to rely on relics such as Ahmed Attaf, 71, Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Zeroual, and Daho Ould Kablia, 91, former Minister of the Interior, responsible for local government reform.
Unable to renew itself, the regime continues to rely on the invariable "army, co-option of the opposition, fragmentation of civil society, rents and repression" . Although still effective, these levers seem increasingly strained. This is because the authorities have been unable to translate into political action any of the demands made by the Hirak, even as part of a minimalist strategy to survive. Although the Hirak movement is now considered defunct, the root causes that led to the popular uprising are still very much present in the Algerian political landscape.
In December 2024, the authorities granted wide-ranging presidential pardons, leading to the release of over 2,400 prisoners, including many prisoners of conscience. While these releases are to be celebrated, they were too quickly read as a sign of a shift in the government’s repressive policy. However, these pardons were quickly followed by new arrests, the most emblematic being that of writer Boualem Sansal. Sacrificed on the altar of a diplomatic crisis between Algeria and France, the case of Boualem Sansal quickly crystallized the resentment of many political movements. While the question of a writer's imprisonment can and should legitimately be raised, the media-political escalation around the case in France played into the regime’s hands, allowing it to rally wider support beyond its traditional base, and once again allowing it to mobilize the rhetoric of the besieged.
While Tebboune's first term was marked by the status quo, there is little to suggest that his second will be any different. There is no doubt that future political upheavals are to be expected, as the regime will soon be faced with the question of succession since the Constitution in theory only allows the exercise of two terms. While the people remain powerless spectators, it would seem that the regime has adopted the adage “Everything must change for everything to remain the same”.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
