As expected, Algeria's presidential election was largely a non-event, but now that it's over, the really interesting stuff happens. On the political level, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has to appoint a prime minister and he will likely shuffle key cabinet posts.
I’m happy to share a recent New York Times Op-Ed on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Algiers last week.
It was published wearing my DoD hat so I was on a shorter leash than usual.
I've been ambivalent about writing something about Libya. On the one hand, separatists in Cyrenaica realized their dream ever since the revolution of marketing their own oil, and Islamists in the General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli realized their dream ever since his election of ousting Prime Minister Ali Zeidan. Big stuff, no doubt. But on the other hand, these events are really just milestones on a path that Libya has long been heading down. They are definitely important milestones, but anyone who has been watching Libya has seen them looming ever larger through the windshield for the last year.
The Justice and Construction Party (JCP), the Muslim Brotherhood's political party in Libya, has allegedly quit Prime Minister Ali Zeidan's government. The JCP had five ministers in the cabinet, including most importantly, Minister of Oil and Gas Abdulbari al-Arussi.
Algeria was quiet over the holidays (with the exception of firecracker skirmishes this week celebrating the Prophet’s birthday), but the political scene may be getting more lively (or just the opposite) in the next couple of weeks.
Parliamentary elections on 10 May have provided commentators with another occasion to discuss why Algeria did not have an “Arab Spring” like so many other countries in the Arabic-speaking world and to prognosticate about why Algerian voter participation rates are likely to be so low. Not one to pass up an opportunity to share NARCO's own views, below is the NARCO take on what is at play in Algeria.
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