Africa: Waiting To Be Heard

AFRICA

Waiting to be Heard

Algerians are among tens of millions of Africans electing leaders this year. But they are also among many Africans who don’t know if their votes will count.

“Ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is not loosening his grip on the levers of power in Algiers just yet,” said the Africa Report.

At least 20 nations on the continent, including Nigeria, Tunisia and Cameroon, are holding elections for presidents, lawmakers and local government in 2019, explained Quartz.

In Algeria, the frail Bouteflika’s term is coming to an end. Signs suggest he should consider stepping down. He never fully recovered from a 2013 stroke. Now 81, he’s been in office since 1999, having rebuilt the country after the “décennie noire,” (black decade) of the North African, majority Muslim country’s civil war. Few rivals can challenge him, however.

“If Bouteflika’s health allows him to run for a fifth term, he will undoubtedly win,” wrote the conservative Jamestown Foundation.

So far, the president, who appears in public rarely, hasn’t officially said if he’ll stand for re-election, despite calls from members of his Front de Libération Nationale political party to jump into the race.

Regardless, Bouteflika’s regime has been harsh.

He prosecuted a blogger for speaking with the spokesman of the Israeli foreign ministry, wrote Agence France-Presse. Algeria doesn’t have diplomatic ties with Israel. The blogger received a sentence of 10 years in jail. That was commuted to seven. Another judge then threw the case out. He’s now in jail pending a new trial.

Amnesty International recently called for the release of a journalist imprisoned simply for covering a peaceful public demonstration in support of a jailed singer.

The Arab Spring never seriously rocked Algeria, an oil producer and OPEC member, wrote Reuters. But protests and strikes have occurred. Unemployment is high. Youth unemployment is astronomical. Many Algerians want change.

But since ballots were allowed in 1989, elections in Algeria have rarely been fair. Bouteflika won 82 percent of the vote in 2014 without campaigning, the Economist reported. There’s little doubt that the elites are devoting some thought to who might succeed him.

Election rigging concerns are hardly exclusive to Algeria.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari recently sacked the country’s chief justice, Al Jazeera reported, raising concerns about whether he was seeking to influence the judiciary ahead of his Feb. 16 re-election bid.

Cameroonian voters are expected to elect local government officials who might play a big role in defusing tensions between English and French-speaking regions of the country, the Journal du Cameroun wrote. But in last year’s presidential election, many English speakers, who complain of mistreatment under the country’s French-speaking leaders, boycotted the ballot in protest.

And in countries like the Republic of Guinea, it’s hard to know if elections will even be held as scheduled.

For democracy to count, so must voting.