What will be President Bouteflika’s next actions?

Now that Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been elected to a fourth term by a decisive majority, voters expect his electoral promises to translate into action.

Algerians from all backgrounds say they hope the incumbent president will help their living standards improve.

During the election campaign, his representatives pledged a programme of “national renewal” revolving around socio-economic development. Citizens are holding him to his words.

Some citizens want housing and jobs, while others demand a better business climate. Everyone has his own idea of what Bouteflika must fix first.

The next five years in the history of Algeria will determine whether the Algerian people will be able to steer the country on the road of gradual change towards a more open and democratic system away from the threat of falling once more under the influence of  extremist radical forces.

When the Algerian people preferred Bouteflika to other presidential candidates, they were actually voting for a responsible and nationalist leader who could manage change without compromising the stability and security of the Algerians. History will ultimately judge him on his success or failure in meeting this historic challenge.

Another challenge facing him will be how to integrate Algerian youth into political life. In other words, how he can channel the energies of the rising generations, who represent more than half of the nation’s population.

A third challenge, no less important than the previous two, is to lessen the dependence of the Algerian economy on petro-dollars. In other words; to diversify the Algerian economy so that oil does not remain the sole source of national wealth in the future.

Whether time will be on his side in tackling these challenges remains to be seen. But one thing is sure: President Bouteflika has the trust of his people and enough historic and political legitimacy to adopt policies that would ultimately modernise Algeria, both politically and economically.

The main obstacle remains the obscurantist forces in Algerian society and politics, the same as in Egypt and the Arab world. How Algeria will contain these forces and start the process of modernisation will have a telling effect in the process of modernisation in the Arab world.

This is the reason of the free choice of the Algerian people in re-electing President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, a living symbol of the Arab national revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. What we badly need in the Arab world today is to reconcile the ideals of those historic revolutions with the modern world.

The Algerian experience in this respect, in the fourth term of the Algerian president, will determine, to a large extent, whether the Arabs are capable of renewal and modernisation without compromising their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.