Algeria giving democracy another try

MEDEA, Algeria -- It's been 15 years since Algeria began one of the first experiments with democracy in the Arab world. What followed was a disaster: a civil war, an estimated 200,000 deaths and terrorist bombing campaigns that became part of daily life in this North African country.

Today, in spite of a national psyche that is still deeply scarred, millions of voters will return to the polls to elect a new lower house of Parliament. It will be the sixth time that Algeria has held multiparty national elections since a military coup in 1992, a track record matched by few other countries in North Africa or the Middle East.

But the promise of democracy remains elusive in Algeria and underscores just how difficult it has been for a truly open and free political system to take root in this tradition-bound Muslim society.

Although voters will be allowed to choose elected representatives, their choices are limited to candidates blessed by the military-backed system of government that has prevailed in Algeria since it gained independence from France in 1962. Only a handful of minor opposition parties are permitted to run against the governing coalition.

Forced to the sidelines, for the most part, are the Islamic political movements that were poised to take power at the ballot box in 1992 until the military intervened, sparking the civil war. While the bloodshed has subsided, democracy has been unable to resolve many of the underlying conflicts that tore apart Algerian society.

"As far as we're concerned, nothing has changed," said Nasreddine Turkman, an Islamic activist who runs an herbal medicine shop in Medea, a city of about 125,000 in the Atlas Mountains. "People are looking for more democracy, more freedom of speech. But lots of people are still prevented from participating."

Turkman, an engineer by training, is a former leader in the Islamic Salvation Front, the party that was on the verge of taking power 15 years ago. Instead, the military declared martial law and banned the front, known by its French acronym, FIS. Some leaders of the movement launched an armed rebellion against the military in response; each side blames the other for the carnage that resulted.

Turkman said he was sentenced to death in absentia and went into hiding for nine years. He has since been officially rehabilitated under a national amnesty program. But like most other former FIS leaders, he is barred from running for office. He predicted that today's elections would be marked by low turnout, saying that voters are frustrated by a lack of real choices.

"The reason for this is because there isn't an open system where people are held accountable for what they do," Turkman said. "The establishment is constituted from a small part of the population and they are ruling from force, not because people like them or trust them."

Public opinion is difficult to gauge in Algeria, a country of 33 million that is blessed with huge natural-gas reserves but afflicted by poverty. Algiers, the capital, is choked by traffic on narrow streets that climb urban hillsides overlooking the Mediterranean. The outskirts of the city are marked by shantytowns and slums filled with migrants from the countryside who moved to escape the years of violence there.

Those who hold power in Algeria generally operate outside the public eye, adding to the sense of a lack of accountability. The army generals who wield enormous influence work in the shadows. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been elected to two terms by large majorities, has dropped out of sight for months at a time without issuing a public statement. He is believed to be recuperating from cancer.

Bouteflika was noticeably silent after suicide bombers struck the Government Palace and a police station in Algiers on April 11 in one of the worst terrorist attacks in years. Instead, the president left it to his prime minister, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, to mourn the 24 dead and visit the wounded in hospitals.

At the same time, Algeria's rulers have achieved some undeniable successes in stabilizing the country after years of civil war, easing restrictions on the news media and gradually -- if slowly -- opening up the political system.

An ambitious national reconciliation program last year granted amnesty to about 2,500 prisoners convicted or accused of terrorism. An additional 300 Islamic fighters still at large also accepted the amnesty, emerging from the mountains and rural areas to turn in their guns.

Bouteflika and the generals have allowed some religious parties to join the political system. His governing coalition includes the Movement of Society for Peace, a party of Islamic fundamentalists that professes nonviolence and holds about 10 percent of the seats in the lower house of Parliament.

The party has called for extending the national reconciliation program, which expired last fall.