In Five North African States, Talk of Democracy Outpaces Action

By Jamal Amiar

Until the first week of June, progress toward democracy and human rights seemed perceptible in all five North African countries. The pace was a measured one, however, in Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania and Libya, with only Algeria actually pursuing multi-party elections. Then, after an Islamist strike, riots, the fall of the government, and imposition of a state of emergency, Algerian democracy suddenly was put on hold.

In Algeria, A Stunning Setback

After 24 years of one-party rule by the National Liberation Front (FLN), bloody riots in October 1988 in Algiers set off a long awaited democratic process. In the following two-and-a-half years, Algeria adopted a new constitution and laws permitting political parties, press freedom, non-governmental associations and private enterprise.

Islamists swept the resulting municipal elections in June 1990, and initially believed their public support ensured similar victories in parliamentary elections scheduled this June 27 and July 18, in which 40 political parties, three of them Islamist, would contend.

However, with promulgation of a new electoral law which, among several changes, substituted for proportional representation a second round of voting to choose between first-round winners, Islamists concluded the government had designed the law to improve its own prospects. Islamist leaders called a general strike, demanding the law be rescinded and that presidential as well as parliamentary elections be held this year.

Reacting to the strike, President Chadli Benjedid agreed to set a date for new presidential elections, but said the legislative elections would be held on schedule and according to the present law. Islamists rioted, and several were killed on the afternoon of June 4. At 2 am the next day, President Benjedid dissolved the government, named former foreign minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali as prime minister, postponed the parliamentary elections and declared a state of siege.

A decree released 17 hours later gave the armed forces full police powers for four months, including the authority to ban political parties, demonstrations, meetings, appeals and strikes threatening public order or public services. It also permitted requisition of workers in the public and private sectors, suspension of newspapers, searches of homes and public buildings, and the dissolution of municipal and regional assemblies.

While young Islamists were exulting over bringing down the government, their shocked leaders called off the strike. As troops began clearing the streets of burned vehicles and improvised barricades, however, it appeared that, for at least the next four months, Algeria's march toward democracy had come to a halt.

In Tunisia and Morocco, Opposition Courted But Islamists Banned

Although the Moroccan and Tunisian situations differ, they have some features in common. Regimes in both states reject the legalization of Islamic political parties. In Tunis, Chadli Neffati, leader of the governing Rassemblement Constitutionnel et Democratique (RCD) party, explains: "All Tunisians are Muslims. Religion is a matter of personal life, not of political life."

In Rabat, the argument is a bit different. King Hassan holds the political title of head of state, and he also holds the religious title of "Commander of the Faithful," thereby monopolizing both religious and political leadership.

The question of legalizing "fundamentalist parties" is not the only issue in Tunis and Rabat, however. In Tunisia, four years after President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's rise to power, the regime is only gradually opening political life to other forces. Ben Ali, a former army general, came to power in November 1987.

On April 2, 1989, general elections were held, with predictable results. President Ben Ali was the only candidate for president, and his governing party, the RCD, won 100 percent of the parliamentary seats. According to unofficial estimates by former University of California at Berkeley scholar Elbaki El Hermassi, who presently is at Tunis University, the RCD, in fact, won only 57 percent of the votes cast, and 24 percent went to the Islamists.

The Tunisian elections were boycotted by the rest of the opposition for "lack of democratic guarantees. " If the figures above are accurate, they demonstrate that the present regime in Tunis is determined to fight the emergence of what appears to be a rather broad-based Tunisian Islamic political movement.

This led the leader of the Tunisian Islamic party, "An-Nahda" (the Renaissance), to leave the country two years ago. His followers, however, have been leading anti-government protests in the streets and in the universities. Last month, for the first time since Tunisia became independent, a bomb exploded in one of the governing party's offices, killing one person. A month later, two students were killed in clashes with the police on the Tunis University campus.

More than 600 persons were arrested last November, and again last April, charged with participation in banned Islamic networks. Also in recent months, various Islamic and leftist publications have been banned from the news stands. Amnesty International late last year issued a report regarding such arrests and Tunisian prison conditions.

In Tunisia, the regime is only gradually opening political life to other forces.

It appears that the present Tunisian regime is following a pattern of domestic political regulation similar to that of the Bourguiba era and of strategies followed elsewhere in the Middle East against Islamic or leftist opposition. During the 1960s and 1970s in Tunisia (as well as in Egypt and elsewhere), the Bourguiba regime encouraged Islamic activism when the regime was faced with mounting leftist opposition. Now in Tunisia, as in Nasser's Egypt, and again in the Sadat era after the signing of the 1978 Israeli Egyptian peace agreement that triggered fierce Islamist opposition, the government is repressing the fundamentalist movement while courting the rest of the mainly liberal and leftist opposition.

Since early this spring, President Ben Ali has allowed partial public financing of activities by opposition parties. Opposition leaders have been invited to participate in consultative sessions for the 1992-1996 development plan project. Opposition access to government media also is under study. Further, after the killing of the two students by security forces at the university, President Ben Ali put the main opposition leader, Mohamed Moaada, in charge of a committee investigating university violence.

In Morocco, too, the Islamists are banned, human rights are not always respected, and every political move or event is justified in terms of the Western Sahara problem. With the beginning of the Sahara affair in 1975, King Hassan permitted new parliamentary elections in 1977 and 1984 in order to develop the necessary political consensus to assert Morocco's claim to the area.

The results of both elections were contested, however, by opposition parties and independent observers. In the fall of 1989, King Hassan postponed the next elections for two years because of the upcoming referendum in the Western Sahara province, to be held under United Nations supervision.

Meanwhile the kingdom has been the subject of an Amnesty International campaign against human rights violations and for the liberation of Morocco's estimated 150 political prisoners. The prisoners date back to failed coups in 1971, 1972 and 1973, and also include opponents to Rabat's claims on the Sahara Province. The most widely publicized prisoner is 64-year-old Abraham Serfaty. He is serving a life sentence and, since the freeing of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Serfaty is believed to be the oldest political prisoner in Africa.

Morocco's human rights record has strained its relations with France, Morocco's main business, scientific and cultural partner, particularly after the launching of the Amnesty International campaign and the publication in Paris of Gilles Perrault's bestseller, Notre Ami le Roi (Our Friend the King), a critical account of Moroccan politics. Rabat has responded by setting up a royal consultative council on human rights, and by allowing independent human rights organizations to function in the kingdom.

One of them, the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights, held its first general congress last May 10 and 11. According to its president, lawyer Abdelaziz Benani, "there have been major regressions in the human rights situation in recent years. " This refers to an estimated 1,500 arrests during the six months following the general strike and street riots of Dec. 14, 1990.

In Morocco, as in Tunisia, it seems that democracy is limited, in the words of French journalist Francois Soudan, to "pluralism for co-opted elites."

In Mauritania, "Only a Matter of Months"?

If one is to discuss democracy in terms of future prospects, the most optimistic statements in the Maghreb these days are coming from little-known Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania. The former French colony, now an Arab League member, is situated on the Atlantic coast south of Morocco. It has a population of a little over two million, 80 percent of whom are Arabs and 20 percent Black Africans.

Although the country has lived under military dictatorship since its independence in 1960, talk of democracy and human rights increased last year, following Mauritania's April 1989 war with Senegal. During and after that war, many Black activists and army officers were killed by security forces after accusations that they were traitors.

Reports on these bloody human rights violations were published in Europe. They led the Nouakchott government to recognize that security forces committed "excesses."

Nouakchott was put under "international watch" and the government promised "independent and open" investigations into the killings. Although things moved slowly, the "international watch" eventually worked.

On April 4, 1990, Amnesty International published a report on human rights violations in Mauritania, and soon afterward the democratic momentum began. The government of President Mouaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Tayaa announced last summer it would hold competitive local elections for the first time in the country's history.

The elections that took place last December were competitive, but all of the candidates had to, be approved by the government.

On April 4, 1991, one year after the Al report, 125 intellectuals, businessmen, lawyers, former government officials, and union leaders wrote an open letter to the Mauritanian head of state reminding him of his government's promises of "open and independent" investigations into human rights violations. The letter requested "the establishment of democratic institutions" and said that "freedom of association and of opinion represent the best guarantee against all attacks against national unity."

On April 15, the Mauritanian president publicly announced "the drafting of a new constitution before the end of the year, and the holding of local, parliamentary, and presidential elections in the following months."

On May 14, one month after the president's speech promising democratic reforms, the same 125 people published a second letter requesting "establishing a precise and constraining schedule" for the holding of local, parliamentary, and presidential elections. The next move will be for Mauritania's president to match words with deeds.

In Libya, the Politics of the "Green Book"

The least movement toward democratic reforms and human rights improvements is in Muammar Qaddafi's Libya. Since he came to power in 1969, his opponents have either left the country or have been assassinated. Some of those assassinations took place overseas.

Two major determinants of Libyan domestic politics are its small population and its huge oil wealth. Of an estimated four million residents, close to two million are foreign workers. Oil revenues for 1990 are estimated at about $9 billion.

Following the US air strike on Tripoli in April of 1986, Qaddafi undertook significant policy shifts. Domestic changes were signaled in 1987 when, during a visit to Algiers, the Libyan president met with two political opponents. Since then, the role of the "popular committees," government appointed local councils with discretionary power in political decision-making, has been played down. That same year a "charter of freedom and human rights" was adopted.

In the economic field, the government initiated incentives for private entrepreneurship in the framework of what was called in Egypt an "infitah" (open door) policy. Privatization of trade is encouraged, and the government now allows every citizen to import $10,000 a year in merchandise for the purpose of trade.

Two major determinants of Libyan domestic politics are its small population and its huge oil wealth.

To understand the prospects for democracy and human rights in Libya, one must also look at what Tripoli is doing to improve its relations with foreign countries. Since the US and Europe imposed a trade embargo on Libya in early 1986, the Libyans have sought to have it lifted. The Qaddafi government publicly welcomed the election of George Bush in 1988, hoping, in vain, for a quick improvement in bilateral relations.

Improvements with Europe are more visible. Although the European trade embargo is still in effect, in recent months the foreign ministers of Italy, Greece, and France have visited their southern Mediterranean neighbor.

Libya has improved its relations with Egypt, Tunisia, and, more spectacularly, Chad. It also is demonstrating a firm commitment to Maghreb unity.

Still conspicuous by its absence in Tripoli, however, is talk of pluralism or the holding of democratic elections in the near future.

Libya's reality remains that of the "Green Book." If democracy emerges anywhere in the country, apparently it will be only at the top, truly a democracy of the very elite.

Jamal Amiar is a US-educated radio journalist based in Tangier, Morocco.