According to editorialist Luc de Barchent, “the hopes of liberalization born in 2019 when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika left (…) have fizzled out”, and “the divorce between the people and their leaders has been illustrated by the indigent participation in the constitutional referendum a year ago ”.
Added to this is “the pandemic which has exacerbated vulnerabilities in the economy, which contracted by nearly 5% last year.” “Public account deficits are widening, inflation is galloping, unemployment affects one in four young people and absolute dependence on oil and gas (which provide more than 90% of export earnings) makes it necessary to have a profound reconversion of the economy. ‘economy that power seems unable to engage,’ he enumerates.
Not to mention a youth who “votes with their feet: at least 10,000 Algerians have entered Spain illegally since the beginning of the year, aboard makeshift boats chartered by mafia networks”.
Against this disastrous background of political, economic and social crisis, underlines Le Point, “power seeks its salvation in external hardening. “With Paris, he engaged in a dead-end standoff over the thorny issue of memory. And above all, he cut ties with Morocco, with whom the relationship was already deplorable. The rupture was materialized by the closure, since October 31, of the gas pipeline (GME) “, notes the columnist.
