President Bouteflika announced some liberalisation measures after riots over the price of food in January in which five people died. But protests have continued. A man tried to set himself alight during a protest outside Algeria’s Employment Ministry for “a decent job for every Algerian” and unemployment benefit equal to half the minimum wage. The protest was organised by a group called the National Committee for the Rights of the Unemployed.
The government has banned a rally planned for Saturday 12 February called by the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD: no relation to the Tunisian RCD), the more right-wing of the two mainly-Berber-based opposition parties, and an umbrella group of which it is part, the National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD), set up at a meeting on 21 January 2011.
CNCD also includes a grouping of independent unions in the public services, the Syndicat national autonome des personnels de l’administration publique (SNAPAP), set up in the 1990s. SNAPAP is under constant pressure from the authorities and a number of its leading figures were recently detained.
The Algerian Socialist Workers Party (PST), not an offshoot of the British SWP but an affiliate of the Fourth International, participated at the meeting that set up the CNCD but, like the more left-wing mainly-Berber-based opposition party, FFS, PST has not joined CNCD and is not formally supporting the demonstration on 12 February. They complain that CNCD does not want to raise social demands.
“The social question, that of jobs, housing and the high cost of living, is at the heart of the revolt and is once again prioritised by the desperate young people who try to burn themselves alive. Action must be taken to join the democratic dimension and the social question.”
