HIBAPRESS – Shafiq Anouri
In the autumn of 2008, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika discovered that the constitution suffered from a simple "technical error": a constitutional article preventing him from staying in power for more than two presidential terms.
Article 74 of the 1996 constitution clearly stipulated that the President of the Republic could only be elected twice. However, this restriction suddenly became the subject of political review, as Bouteflika announced a constitutional amendment that would allow the removal of this ceiling, which opened the door for his candidacy for a third term in the 2009 elections. The newspaper Le Monde mentioned in an article published on October 30, 2008, that the main goal of the amendment was to lift the constitutional restriction that limits the number of presidential terms, which was considered by a number of Algerian intellectuals at the time as one of the political guarantees to prevent the executive branch from monopolizing power. Amendment through Parliament instead of referendum President Bouteflika announced the draft constitutional amendment on October 29, 2008, during a speech on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year. According to what the Spanish newspaper El País reported in a report by journalist Ignacio Simbrero on October 30, 2008, the Algerian President justified the amendment by the need to enable the people to "exercise their right to choose their rulers and renew their confidence in them," which was understood as a prelude to canceling the constitutional restriction that prevents the President from running for a third term. Although the idea of amending the constitution had been raised previously through the possibility of organizing a popular referendum, the authorities ultimately chose to pass the amendment through Parliament. The newspaper "Le Monde" explained that resorting to the parliamentary path allowed the amendment to be passed more quickly, as well as avoiding the risks of weak popular participation that may accompany constitutional referendums. Overwhelming parliamentary vote On November 12, 2008, the Algerian Parliament met in its two chambers in a joint session to vote on the draft constitutional amendment. According to international press reports at the time, 500 members voted in favor of the amendment, compared to 21 against and 8 abstentions, which led to the abolition of the determination of the number of presidential terms while maintaining the term of one term at five years. A report by Human Rights Watch on the political situation in Algeria at the time indicated that the amendment passed without extensive discussion within Parliament, which allowed it to be approved quickly. Under this amendment, the President of the Republic could run for an unlimited number of terms, which paved the way for Bouteflika to run in the 2009 elections. Constitutional and political background of the amendment A number of researchers believe that the 2008 amendment was not a sudden decision. In a study on the review of the Algerian constitution, researcher Sherif Ben Naji points out that Bouteflika, since he came to power in 1999, had criticized the constitution that was put in place in 1996 during the reign of President Liamine Zeroual, as he considered that this constitution creates a kind of overlap between the parliamentary system and the presidential system and limits the powers of the President of the Republic. According to the same study, the Algerian President worked during his first and second terms to create the political conditions for a constitutional amendment that would rearrange the balances of power within the political system. This trend appeared gradually before it was officially embodied in the 2008 amendment project, which abolished the ceiling of presidential terms. Tense security and social context The constitutional amendment came at a time when Algeria was experiencing complex political and social conditions. The country was still subject to the state of emergency imposed since 1992, and 2008 witnessed a number of armed attacks that were claimed by groups linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in addition to a wave of strikes and social protests in several sectors. The aforementioned Human Rights Watch report also indicated that the media and political field in Algeria at the time was subject to various legal restrictions, including strict defamation laws and the possibility of prosecuting journalists on charges of insulting state institutions. In this context, the public discussion about the constitutional amendment was relatively limited compared to the importance of the institutional change it brought about. The road to the third term After the constitutional amendment was approved, the presidential elections were held in April 2009, where President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected for a third term with 90.24 percent of the votes, according to the French newspaper “La Tribune”. The 2008 constitutional amendment was an important turning point in the path of the Algerian political system, as it changed the constitutional framework that had organized the transfer of power since the 1996 constitution, and reflected, according to researchers, how constitutional mechanisms were used to reshape the rules of the political system in accordance with the existing balances of power in Algeria.
