The Maghreb researcher and specialist, Kader Abderrahim, pointed out, on Thursday, “the return of a regime of fear” in Algeria, drowned in disappointment following the wind of hope that had been raised by the Hirak movement, violently repressed by the system.
In an interview on Vatican radio, on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the popular pacifist protest movement of Hirak, the author of the book “Geopolitics of Algeria” affirmed that “Algerians have unfortunately not been heard from those who hold the reigns of the country, when their demands were both realistic and modest”.
“To date, all those who think in a free way in Algeria are systematically hunted down, dismissed, even imprisoned”, was indignant the lecturer at Sciences Po, evoking, in this sense, the fate of several university researchers. , intellectuals and journalists.
According to him, “there is no longer any press in a country which prided itself on the freedom of its publications. All the achievements have been shelved for an indefinite period and the prisons are already full”, underlining the failure of a democratic transition despite the peaceful and popular gatherings of nearly 13 million Algerians every Friday for regarding three years in the whole country.
Since the abortion of this hope, “society has withdrawn into itself, which prevents Algeria from entering modernity collectively and from meeting the social, economic and political challenges”, observed the specialist.
”How to envisage a credible alternative for the Algerians in these conditions?” wonders Kader Abderrahim, considering that the process will be “certainly very complicated and will take a lot of time”.
Asked regarding relations between Algiers and certain European countries in the wake of the energy crisis due in particular to the conflict in Ukraine, the expert assured that “Algeria, having not modernized its technical hydrocarbon tools, is far from ‘have the means to replace Russia in terms of gas supply’.
Even its resources are “limited”, he added, noting that Algeria “has, moreover, no prospect for the future, because the power knows that it has no legitimacy and that everything can stop suddenly, violently and quickly”.
“Such is his great problem, which is added to the major, even unique obsession of those who are in charge, whose only concern is the sustainability of the political system as it exists,” concluded the academic.
