Socialist Workers Party seeks to derail movement against Algerian regime
By
Will Morrow and Alex Lantier
16 March 2019
As workers launch strikes against the Algerian military dictatorship, and millions of workers and youth pour into the streets in cities across the country, the petty-bourgeois Socialist Workers Party (PST) is seeking to derail the movement. While the struggle poses the need for the working class to take power, the PST is promoting illusions that Algeria’s bloodstained regime will reform itself.
The National Liberation Front (FLN) regime has announced it would suspend elections and that the figurehead president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, will only step down after the protests are over. It is a sign that the regime intends to make no concessions to the workers and youth, and intends to put in a new figurehead for the same corrupt regime. However, an article published on the web site of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), the French affiliate of the PST, hails this maneuver as “a first step back by the regime, to be turned into a victory against the system.”
“The announcement of Bouteflika’s retirement is the result of the fantastic popular movement that is underway,” PST member Kader Leoni writes, adding, “But we haven’t won yet! Bouteflika has announced his retirement … but he’s still president!” Leoni demands a self-reform of the FLN regime by rewriting Algeria’s constitution:
The promise of a Second Republic and a new constitution risk being indefinitely delayed or, even worse, of serving to put the regime back together again without any democratic improvements but, on the contrary, stepped-up free market reforms demanded by key sections of the bourgeoisie and the army, together with imperialist powers, notably France. … We must…