Algerians to Vote on Promised Reforms

Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid announced Wednesday that the political reforms he promised to make in the wake of last week’s anti-government riots will be put to a popular vote in two referendums starting next month.

A three-point communique issued by Bendjedid’s office said the first referendum, to be held Nov. 3, will ask Algerians to approve the appointment of a new premier who will be responsible before the People’s National Assembly, Algeria’s 295-seat Parliament.

The second will ask voters for permission to amend the Algerian constitution to incorporate the unspecified political reforms that Bendjedid promised in a national address Monday after nearly a week of bloody rioting, in which more than 200 people are believed to have been killed.

The riots, by thousands of angry youths protesting food shortages, price increases and deteriorating living standards, deeply unsettled Bendjedid’s government and sharpened what diplomatic observers here see as an intense power struggle between reformists and traditionalists within the government, the army and the ruling National Liberation Front, Algeria’s only political party.

Bendjedid’s announcement gave no date for the second referendum but said the reform package itself would be submitted for approval at a National Liberation Front congress in December.

That meeting will be crucial to the future of Bendjedid’s government and, by extension, to the direction in which Algeria, North Africa’s largest and most influential nation, moves over the coming years, diplomats here agreed.

Even before the riots, the December meeting was being described as vital to a program of economic reforms designed to liberalize Algeria’s rigid Soviet-style economy.

Key to Bendjedid’s Future

In the wake of the rioting, much of it directed against the austerity measures that Bendjedid has adopted over the last year, the meeting is now also regarded as vital to the president’s ability to remain in power.

“We expect it will be a watershed event,” said one Western diplomat, “a make-or-break showdown between the reformers . . . and the party old guard.”

What is said to be a loose alliance between old-guard leftists in the party, the government and the senior levels of the army is believed to have played a major role in instigating a series of wildcat strikes that sparked the riots in Algiers and at least 12 other provincial towns and cities.

Although tension remained high, calm prevailed in the capital for the second day Wednesday as tanks and troops withdrew from most areas following the lifting of a state of siege, proclaimed last Thursday at the height of the rioting.

The fact that no new disturbances were reported was an encouraging sign for the government, suggesting that Bendjedid’s promise of political reform had, at least for the time being, the intended placating effect.

However, diplomats said that in the debate within the leadership between now and the party congress, Bendjedid’s political future is likely to be determined by the extent to which he can deflect blame for both the riots and the widespread frustration underlying them from himself and his policies.

His pledge of reform, so soon after the rioting, should be seen in that light, the diplomats added.

Although the presidential announcement promised Algerians “a greater democratization of political life,” the diplomats said they believed Bendjedid was trying to undercut the party hierarchy that opposes him by making the premier accountable to Parliament--a body that since last February has been dominated by the president’s reformist supporters.

“It’s a kick in the pants to the old party hacks,” one diplomat said. “It increases the Parliament’s influence at the expense of the party’s, but at the same time it keeps the power where it really lies, which is with the president.”