Algeria - Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the Government ("The Power")

Ex-president Liamine Zeroual's former foreign minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika is calling the shots these days, by default. The April 1999 elections were billed as democratic; however, on April 14, 1999, two days before the election, Bouteflika's six opponents pulled out of the race en masse to protest Zeroual's refusal to meet with them over charges of election fraud. The fact that Zeroual refused to let foreign monitors have a peek at the process propped up the crybabies' claims. It ain't the first time ole' Zeroual's tilted the scales. His, and the army's, cancellation of 1991 elections the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was well on its way to winning set off the current Muslim extremist campaign of throat-slashing and chainsaw manicures in the Algerian countryside. Bouteflika once served as right-hand man to Houari Boumedienne, the army colonel who, in 1965, overthrew Algeria's first civilian president, Ahmed Ben Bella. When a reporter asked Bouteflika if it was time for the army to surrender political power, he replied, "Not yet."

The military is directly in control of the High Security Council, with General Khaled Nezar, the leader of the Algerian military, pulling the strings. Security forces have made huge gains in 1999 against the GIA, forcing the guerrillas to concentrate more on military targets than innocent peasants. But with Bouteflika's dream, come-from-behind victory, no jugulars will be safe in Algeria any time soon.

Algeria: Africa's Burma?

Liamine Zeroual's annulment of the 1991 elections, which the FIS appeared to be winning hands-down, has traditionally been met with the same international condemnation that Burma's SLORC rulers faced after dishonoring the results in that country's elections in 1989, which the National Leagure for Democracy had won hands-down. But little known, or equally remembered, was the FIS pronouncement at the time that should they win, the elections would be Algeria's last.