Monday, March 07, 2011

ALGIERS: Algeria’s government is studying ways to improve dialogue with the public including the use of social media, a minister said Sunday, a day after police cracked down on anti-regime rallies.
Communication Minister Nacer Mehal said Algiers was close to setting up measures to amend what he said were virtually non-existent channels of information dissemination between the government and the wider population.

The move aims at “organizing institutional communication and to reflect on instruments that allow to improve relations between the state and the citizens,” he told the French-speaking public radio Chaine III.
Communication was “absolutely non-existent, absent, or in any case, very inefficient. To say the least, it was not at all adapted to the present context. We need to improve that,” he added.

“We need to look into what channels of communication to use, including social networks.” Sites such as Facebook were key in organizing recent uprisings in the Arab world that toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.
The minister also vowed to “open up” ministries to journalists.

Algeria counts several independent newspapers, among which a dozen are national dailies. But allowing public radio or television groups to compete with other domestic or foreign networks remains unforeseen.

Algerian police and pro-government activists Saturday foiled a sixth attempt by opposition protesters seeking to depose President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999.

A faction of the National Coordination for Change and Democracy had called the protest in three different parts of the city for 11 a.m. in defiance of an official ban on protesting in Algiers.
However, several dozen demonstrators found themselves quickly surrounded by police.

Counter-demonstrators carrying photographs of the Algerian president chanted “Bouteflika Is Not [Hosni] Mubarak” – the Egyptian president forced out by an uprising on Feb. 18.
They chased and roughed up the anti-government protesters.
The CNCD denounced what it said was the complicity between police and pro-regime supporters against the protesters, who included women. They had been openly threatened with knives, a statement passed to AFP said. – AFP