Friday, February 25, 2011

Algeria Thursday lifted a 19-year-old state of emergency in a concession to the opposition designed to keep out a wave of uprisings currently sweeping the Arab world.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has “ordered the cancellation of the extension of the emergency measure put in place by presidential decree on February 9, 1992,” said a statement published in the official gazette.
However, it was only partial. Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kabila announced earlier in the day that protest marches would continue to be banned in the capital.

“The moment does not appear to have arrived to authorize marches in Algiers,” he said. Marches outside the capital must be authorized three days ahead of the event.

The government also indicated that the army will continue to pursue its anti-terror fight, particularly against armed Islamic extremists who recently abducted an Italian tourist in southeastern Algeria.
The Cabinet decided Tuesday to lift the state of emergency, in a move approved by Bouteflika. The two-day delay in enacting the decision was needed to replace the law on the books with a new one. Publication of the change in the Official Journal was the final step to lifting the state of emergency.

Bouteflika, in office since 1999, also Thursday placed anti-corruption “at the heart” of government action, in what appeared to be a conciliatory move to appease simmering public anger.

“Strongly determined to protect the national economy, the state placed the fight against corruption, parasitic practices and fraud at the heart of its action” he said in a statement read by his adviser Mohammad Ali Boughazi.

The announcement coincided with the anniversary of the creation of the main Algerian labor union (UGTA) and the nationalization of the oil industry.

Corruption, and the perception that the political elite was plundering the country at the cost of economic hardship, was a key factor behind mass protests across the Arab world.
In an unrelated development, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables suggested that a mystery illness suffered by Bouteflika is cancer, not the stomach ulcer reported by state media.

But U.S. embassy messages from the WikiLeaks cache of 250,000 State Department documents, independently reviewed by Reuters, say the alleged cancer is in remission and Bouteflika could live for several more years.
The subject of Bouteflika’s health is rarely broached publicly by Algerian officials although it has been widely discussed by ordinary Algerians since he visited France for medical treatment in November 2005 and again in 2006.
Official media at the time said it was understood that he had suffered from a hemorrhagic stomach ulcer.

But this version was contested in a Jan. 3, 2007 cable by then ambassador Robert Ford discussing speculation about Bouteflika’s health. “A physician … familiar with President Bouteflika’s health condition recently told us in strictest confidence that the president suffered from cancer – as had been widely speculated – but that it was currently in remission for the foreseeable future, allowing the president to fulfill his duties,” he wrote. – Agencies