Founder Lara Setrakian, a foreign correspondent who had worked for outlets like ABC News and Bloomberg covering the conflict for the past several years, decided that telling the story of Syria required more than just filing occasional reports to TV or newspapers. So she decided to start her own dedicated news site about the conflict in the war-torn country. This initiative can be seen as part of an ongoing trend towards the unbundling of the media, like we to do it here with the platform about “The Arab world in revolution(s)”.

Syria Deeply is an independent digital media project led by journalists and technologists. Their goal is to build a better user experience of the story by adding context to content. Over time the hope is to add greater clarity, deeper understanding, and more sustained engagement to the global conversation.

Syria Deeply offers more than a typical, traditional online news site. It is using the best digital tools to convey the story in a more complete way: “The goal is to bridge journalism and technology, education and foreign policy, by reshaping the way we create and deliver the story,” says Lara Setrakian.

It has headlines about recent stories,  a video unit, related messages from Twitter and links to opinion pieces. But instead of it being about all the news in a specific town or city, it is all about Syria. The site also has audio reports and interviews uploaded with SoundCloud, which is one of the technology providers that Setrakian has partnered with.

You can  find for example an informative timeline tracing the conflict in Syria since March 2011, video content with background information on the Syria crisis and the global players, infographics about the most relevant players, the key people running the regime as it battles the revolution.

“We float in and out of the issue, our attention pulled in so many directions. That’s no one’s fault: as a foreign correspondent I have to chase the latest breaking crisis; as a viewer, you follow the headlines that flow. But as a result we never really get a deeper understanding of a what’s going on”, explained Lara Setrakian the day of the launch of the platform to Huffington Post. And she continues: “If we change how people see the world, we can change the world, because we all act on our perceptions of reality, our mental fact file of myths and misconceptions. We can make the world a much better place, in a quantum leap, if we can achieve a breakthrough in how we explain it.”

Sabine Lange

Syria Deeply on Facebook
Follow Syria Deeply on Twitter
Follow Lara Setrakian on Twitter

Article on GIGAOM: Syria Deeply and the ongoing unbundling of the news

For our web series  “Generation Revolution” the filmmakers Arman and Arash T. Riahi are realizing 10 portraits, published on this page one by one.

 Salam Yousri, director and author in Cairo :

Salam Yousri was born in Algeria in 1982. Working with “The Town House Art Gallery” in 2010, he established the Cairo Complaints Choir, and he continues to act as the group’s artistic director to this day.

Amer Al-Taher – rapper in Amman, Jordan

Amer Al-Taher is a Jordanian rapper from Amman. He sees himself as part of the next generation of Jordanians, a generation that bravely seeks out change in government through creative and non-violent means.

Jumana Mustafa – Poet in Amman, Jordan

 The Palestinian and Jordan poet Jumana Mustafa is showing us her favorite theater in Amman which just burnt down.

Warsheh – graphic design and branding agency based in Amman, Jordan: 

The word “Warsheh” literally means “workshop” in Arabic. Warsheh was founded in 2011 by the graphic designers Mothanna Hussein and Jo Bedu and by Tamer Almasri and Michael Makdah.

EUNUS – Association in Support of the Syrian Revolution:

Founded in September of 2011, the EUNUS association is a conglomeration of Syrian citizens defining itself as a “jointly coordinated force” dedicated to achieving a free and democratic Syria.

The film “Everyday Rebellion” by Arman and Arash T. Riahi is currently in production and is expected to be shown at the end of 2013 by ARTE. “Everyday Rebellion” is a production of the Golden Girls Filmproduktion & Filmservices and Mira Film, in coproduction with ORF, ZDF in collaboration with ARTE, Schweizer Fernsehen and with the support of: MEDIA, FILMFONDS WIEN, BUNDESAMT FÜR KULTUR, ZÜRCHER FILMSTIFTUNG, INNOVATIVE FILM and Pixel Lab.

LINKS
More informations on Everyday Rebellion‘s website.
The accompanying webseries Creative Resistance by ARTE Creative presents every two weeks methods of peaceful protest that are presented by icons of the movements, activists, artists but also by creative users.

The biggest opposition alliance, the Syrian National Council (SNC), and other oppositional groups participated in this plan with the programmatic title “The Day After” (the subversion of the Assad Regime). The opposition’s work had been promoted by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) as well as by Switzerland, the USA, and two non-government organizations from the Netherlands and Norway. With this “manual” opposition groups wants to prove that they are indeed not shattered, as is always claimed by the press.

The paper’s main points:

• Rule of law
Syria shall be transferred “from a state which is subject to political arbitrariness by individuals” to a state under the rule of law where no human being shall be beyond the law. International human rights standards shall be upheld. Citizens of all confessions shall participate in the process of creating a state under the rule of law.

• Reform of electoral system and constituent assembly
In the paper they speak in favor of the abolishment of the constitution of 2012 as one of the first steps to take. The new constitution shall serve as a basis for a new electoral system where representatives of the state shall be appointed by voters in free and fair elections. Furthermore, not only the currently ruling Ba’ath Party, but also other parties have to be admitted for the elections. It also shall be possible to prosecute officials for offences committed in office.

• Reconciliation
Victims of violence and abuse of the recent past and also cases dating back further to the past shall be served justice. The responsible have to be found and their crimes have to be revealed with the goal to prevent abuse in the future and to restore the confidence of people in the institutions of the state. For this purpose a committee shall be installed with the task to keep the general public informed.
Time will tell if the different rebel groups will stick to the charter. Just recently an UN report showed: “The commission interviewed ten rebel fighters in Aleppo. They had never heard the terms ‘international humanitarian law’ and ‘international human rights law’ before.  
The representatives of the opposition also spoke out against the quick appointment of a transitional government if it is not internationally recognized. “If the international community is not willing to unanimously recognize a transitional government it would just be wasted time”, said the political scientist Afra Jalabi, who is a member of the Syrian National Council, in Berlin.

Westerwelle: “Encouraging”
Meanwhile Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called the position paper an “encouraging signal”. He pointed out: It is critical that the Syrian opposition fosters unity and commits to the acknowledgement of democracy, tolerance, and plurality.”

USA consider France’s push forward premature
Yesterday French President François Hollande announced already that he would recognize a transitional government. However, the USA consider this too early. The Syrian opposition itself has to decide when it is ready to name the candidates for a transitional government. USA fear Syrian radicals could come to power.

ARTE Journal, Ulrike Dässler
Translation: Ingo Brauner

LINK :

 Syria and “The Day After” Project

His 48-hour hunger strike did not change the sternness of the justice. In addition to the prison sentence, El-Haqed must also pay a 1.000 dirham fine (around 90 Euros).

Mouad Belghouat, bane of the monarchy, stopped eating for two days in the beginning of July to protest against his conditions of detention. He declared himself victim of harassment by his cellmates , said that he was not allowed to make any phone calls and complained that his cell was constantly searched by the prison guards.

Gagged until his trial

The first verdict was delivered without the possibility for the young artist to make a final statement. During the trial, neither the young man nor his lawyers were there. When his attorney arrived at the court, it was already too late. The session had been brought forward. Deliberations had begun already, reason why the court refused to allow the attorney to make a final statement. Before the courthouse, El-Haqed fans expressed their support the whole time.

Belghouat was arrested on March 29. Famous for singing against corruption and social injustice, Belghouat was being accused for insulting state employees and official institutions. In one of his songs, broadcasted on Youtube (now removed), “Kilaab Addawla”, the video shows an officer with a donkey’s face. Belghouat’s lawyer said the video editing that goes along with the song was fabricated and shared by someone else. He added that the whole case was just a political attack whose goal was to take down a well-known activist.

Figurehead of the Feb20 movement

“El-Haqed” means “The Rancorous One”.  The 24-year-old rapper was in the vanguard of the February 20th movement and is one of its best-known figures. Mouad Belghouat has already been sentenced in, to a four-months prison time for assault, a sentence which he had already served whilst on remand for ”attacking a counter-demonstrator” on 10 September 2011.

The following video also features the song “Kilaab Addawla”, but with a different editing:

We realised a portrait of Mouad in our webdocumentary “Generation Revolution”:

Facebook of Mouad’s supporters

More about Mouad on this platform:

The rapper Mouad Belghouat is free!

Zineb el Rhazoui: “The Moroccan regime is past master in the art of conducting sham trials”

Rapper “el Haked” still in prison!

More links:

Lawyers of Moroccan rapper charged with defamation urge release (Al Arabiya news)

El Haqed, Morocco’s hip hop revolutionary (The Guardian)

Moroccan rapper charged for anti-police song (The Guardian)

 Qatar cannot be ignored by anyone wishing to play a political role in the Near East. This Sunni regime  has considerable influence both in North Africa and the Arab countries being buffeted by the winds of change. Guido Steinberg, specialist on the Near East explains: “Qatar has become rich over the last 10 years due to gas exports and it redistributes some of this money to forces that it considers to be the real winners in the Arab ‘spring’ or ‘uprisings’, namely the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,  Libya,  Tunisia, and probably also Syria.”

 Al-Jazeera, the major weapon in Qatar’s foreign policy
The state-owned television channel Al Jazeera, where many important positions are held by the Muslim Brotherhood, is the major weapon in Qatari foreign policy, as shown by what happened in Libya:  the channel called on people to rise up against Colonel Gaddafi whilst Qatar provided weapons to the Islamist rebels. Weapons which are being used again today, as Guido Steinberg explains: “According to several reports, Qatar has sent Libyan fighters to Syria, for example, so they can take part in the insurrection.”

 Qatar gets involved in the Syrian conflict
Qatar isn’t just supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels, it is pushing the Arab League and the West towards military intervention in Syria. It’s a political calculation which hides a religious motive:  Qatar wants to overthrow the Shiite-Alawi regime of Bashar al-Assad and substitute Sunni forces. According to Guido Steinberg, “that is what makes the Qatari policy so dangerous.  If we don’t stop what is happening in Syria,  it will lead to sectarian civil war and the Alawi, Christians and possibly the Kurds will be the victims. There is no good and evil in this country, there is only evil!

Qatar’s double game
Qatar’s foreign policy also constitutes a risk for France. Like his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande is banking on continuing or even increased cooperation between France and the pro-Islamist emirate. But according to Guido Steinberg,  European politics won’t stop the rise of the Islamists: “All we can do is try to act so that it develops in a certain direction, as was the case in Turkey.” Qatar should continue to seek to consolidate the influence of conservative religious groups. And the propaganda  images of an open and welcoming country organising the World Cup in 2022 shouldn’t fool anyone.

Patrick Schulze-Heil for ARTE Journal

MORE LINKS

Read also the interview of Guido Steinberg : “Qatar tried to get the better of the Saudi Arabia”

It is almost impossible to enter Bahrain as a journalist. At the end of April, when the kingdom hosted the Formula 1 Grand Prix despite the problems rocking the country, reporters who tried to film the repression of the demonstrations were arrested. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, this small monarchy in the Persian Gulf does not issue visas to the media. Crossing the border illegally, as in Syria, is not an option as Bahrain is an island. NGOs also have difficulty getting in to the country.

Over the last few months, several journalists have been expelled when the police discovered they had attended demonstrations for democracy. Footage of events in Bahrain is hard to come by. The only way of finding out what is happening is via amateur video-clips posted on YouTube and information sent by activists via Twitter. Stéphanie Lamorré has spent a month under cover in the country alongside the rebels. She gives an account of her experience, from the viewpoint of three women. Brave activists who explain their revolution is going unseen. How can they make the uprising against the government visible? Three destinies, three views on the country excluded from the Arab revolution and forgotten by the west.

Documentary – ARTE France, Premières Lignes, 2012, 52 min
Directed by Stéphanie Lamorré
On air on ARTE on Tuesday, 12th June, 22.15 pm

The situation in Bahrain

In the last year, 60 people have been killed. A lot for a country of 600,000 inhabitants, ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The Bahrainis are demanding the same as the Syrians, Egyptians and Tunisians: democracy and freedom. But the rest of the world seems convinced it won’t happen in Bahrain. The reality is that the Bahraini insurgents have fallen foul of history. Unlike in Syria, in Bahrain the majority of the population is Shiite whilst the elite is Sunni. And Bahrain is a satellite of Saudi Arabia and an ally to western countries. It was the Saudi army and its tanks that invaded Bahrain to re-establish order in the streets. It is a hard concept to imagine, a country invading a sovereign nation with tanks to suppress peaceful civilian demonstrations.

BONUS

Zainab (29 years old, Activist/Blogger)
Zainab is one of the activists with whom Stéphanie Lamorré, the director of the documentary BAHREÏN, PLONGÉE DANS UN PAYS INTERDIT, was in contact before she arrived in Bahrain. She tweets all day long to make the world aware. Her pseudonym is “angryarabia” (@angryarabiya).

Fatima (28 years old, Doctor)
Fatima was arrested last year because she was working at Salmanya hospital at the time of the clashes and she treated some demonstrators. She has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. She talks about a memo sent to the hospitals a week before this interview forbidding them to treat people injured during demonstrations.

Nada (38 years old, Doctor)
Nada was arrested, imprisoned and tortured for treating protestors from Pearl Roundabout during the confrontations the year before. She looks back on her arrest.

Ouahida (28 years old, Volunteer nurse)
Ouahida is not a nurse, but she has taken first aid courses, so she can help her compatriots. Every day, Ouahida risks going to people’s houses to care for them. This film shows the demonstration of 13 February 2012, the eve of the date of the anniversary of the revolution in Bahrain.

Zahra (22 years old, Unemployed)
Zahras husband is a political refugee who lives in exile, she is hoping to be able to join him. At the start of the film, Zahra visits the family of a martyr as a sign of support. Then, we film her in her car, before going to the demonstration.

Zahra at the cemetery
Zahra visits the grave of her 18-year-old cousin who was killed a few days previously by the police. Whilst being chased by police jeeps, he was hit by two vehicles simultaneously, causing internal haemorrhaging. He was then taken to the police station where he died.

“Allahu Akbar”
In this scene we can see Ouahida and her daughter crying out “Allahu Akbar” as a sign of protest against the regime and support for the protesters.

BLOG

Follow Ahlam Oun’s blog for ARTE: “Hidden stories about Bahrain”

Ever since their uprising began over a year ago, ordinary people in Syria have been using art, illustration, song, cell-phone cinema, theatre and dance to reclaim public space from the state. A group of curators decided to put together lots of this creative works (films, music, visual art, graffiti, cartoons.etc).

Like the political art taking place inside and outside the country, many of the participants in the exhibition Culture in Defiance: Continuing Traditions of Satire, Art and the Struggle for Freedom in Syria are anonymous. The finger puppets of Masasit Mati, the artists’ group behind Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator and the poster-makers Alshaab Alsori Aref Tarekh (“The Syrian People Know Their Way”) challenge nearly fifty years of unwavering Ba’athist propaganda. The artists in the collective Art and Freedom who have been drawing, painting and sculpting the revolution sign their work in solidarity with the Syrian people. While artist Khalil Younes captures the iconographic nature of their courage with verve and channeled rage. Leading Syrian writer Rafik Shami lends his voice to the fray, as new bands and rappers use the internet to disseminate ideas that are deemed illegal at home. To paraphrase Jameel, the masked director of Top Goon, everything that is scary can be dealt with through laughter, beauty and human resolve.

© Hamza Bakkour (40×50 cm)

© Khalil Younes, “About a young man called Kashoosh (30×40 cm)

© Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator (video on Youtube), read also the blog from Rima Marrouch

Culture in Defiance
Prince Claus Fund Gallery
4 June – 23 November
Herengracht 603
1017 CE Amsterdam
The exhibition is an initiative of the Prince Claus Fund and curated by Malu Halasa, Aram Tahhan, Leen Zyiad and Donatella Della Ratta.

The exhibition is accompanied by an bilingual English and Arabic publication analysing the creative expressions of dissent taking place in Syria today as well as essays and interviews with prominent Syrian intellectuals.

Curator Donatella Della Ratta on mediaoriente

Since the beginning of the revolution in January 2011, Dina Abouelsoud is more than just a hostel owner near Tahrir Square. The 36-year-old is fighting for Egypt’s democratisation, trying at the same time to keep her day job in tourism running.

There isn’t much business. Recently, a group of German and French artists cancelled their reservation because of safety fears. Abouelsoud shrugs her shoulders. That’s how it’s been since the Egyptian population decided not to let up until Murabak stepped down. “It was a good thing for the country, of course, but the hostel was empty for months. A disaster for tourism.”

A dream come true

Abouelsoud hardly lets on how bad business is. She is too deeply concerned with the revolution’s agenda – and the hostel is too much a dream come true: “I didn’t find the place, it found me.” At the end of the nineties, Abouelsoud moved away from her home city Alexandria, to work as a tour guide and in hostels in Cairo, Sharm El-Sheikh and the White Desert. Ten years later, she decided to set up her own business.

Is it hard for women in Egypt? “As a woman, it’s very hard to gain respect,” she says. “Especially when it comes to giving orders. People just don’t take you seriously. In particular, men don’t want to do what women tell them to.”

After she found the right space and obtained hostel licences, she opened over New Year’s 2009/2010. She didn’t tell her family, wanting instead to first establish herself. The first year, the hostel was fully booked – overbooked, even. When the large apartment next to her was vacated, it was an obvious next step to expand into it. They opened the new wing on 25 January. Then the tourists stopped coming. The rooms, however, were not empty. “The people were scared to hold meetings in their homes”, Abouelsad tells us. “So I opened my doors to them.” The protesters could warm up, have a shower and have something to eat, and a place to sleep. It was a place to retreat to, just a fifteen-minute walk from Tahrir Square. 

Since then, the political meetings at “Dina’s Hostel” are open to world travellers and revolutionaries alike. “Anyone who wants to come to Tahrir Square can do so,” she says. With guests in tow, she crawls through the crowd in the Square. Her phone rings: Nawal El Saadawi is on her way to the Square. The 80-year-old author and doctor is Egypt’s most famous feminist. She wants to be among the demonstrators. Abouelsoud beams.

Later that afternoon, El Saadawi comes into the hostel. Three young men meet spontaneously in the hostel’s lounge, sit around the grand dame of feminism, enthroned in the middle, discussing their agenda. The shortcomings are many and the fighting spirit high.

Abouelsoud remembers the resistance which she herself had to overcome. “These people didn’t have it easy with me. I have a strong personality and they couldn’t deal with it.” “They” are the authorities, the police, the secret service. “They threatened to take away my licence. But in the end, I made it.” For the first time in her life, she was unable to get around paying a bribe. “The mafia is everywhere and it starts with the doorman at the civil offices. When I tell him that I need a licence, he immediately calculates: hostel means tourists which means money, and lots of it.”

After she obtained her licence, it was the end of Abouelsoud’s dealings with bribery. She has ignored all threats since that date. “In every hostel I’ve worked in, policemen have been bribed. There are alternatives of sorts. A policeman drops in, has a shower, takes a nap, and has breakfast, as if it were his home.”

She played the gender card

When police tried that at her hostel, she played the gender card. She told them she was a woman and didn’t want to risk her reputation. She made an exception and used patriarchal ideas to her own ends. Abouelsoud also organises film nights, concerts and exhibitions at the hostel. She needs new ideas, not only because the industry is flailing but because Cairo seems to be disintegrating from the inside out. Downtown is still the tourist centre, but in a few years, one of the main sights will disappear: the famous Egyptian Museum is relocating to outside of the city. The move is set to take place in August 2015.

What does the future hold for Dina’s hostel? “I don’t know how long I can keep going”, Abouelsoud says. Otherwise, she says, she will sell. “Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic. The militarists played us around right from the start. Now we have Islamists in parliament. Most of them don’t care what happens anymore. The main thing for them is that the economy improves. People are fearful of the future.” She understands that poverty must not be overlooked.

But she believes that the revolution and its economic interests must not oppose one another. “I would encourage everyone to see the revolution through to the end. If we take the next steps, the future will be much, much brighter.”

Background:

Can tourism support the revolution? Tourism is one of Egypt’s most important sources of foreign revenue. With some ten billion US dollars, the tourism industry is responsible for twelve percent of Egypt’s gross national product. In 2010, 15 million tourists travelled to Egypt, a new record. When political demonstrations began on 25 January 2011, the boom stopped abruptly. Travel warnings and media reports scared off travellers in the period following. In some places, the number of tourists fell by 80 percent. Good business over the Christmas period accounted for the fact that they still had ten million visitors in 2011. Spain, however, seems to have profited the most from the Arab Spring: The Canary Islands saw a near 20-percent increase in visitors between January and September 2011.

This year, Egypt was a partner country at the International Travel Trade Show (ITB) at the beginning of March in Berlin. Minister of Tourism Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour took the opportunity to present his ambitious goals: By 2017, he wants to raise the number of visitors to Egypt to 30 million. During this time, he will obtain politically motivated support from Germany. The newspaper “taz” called for more people to visit North Africa in a comment article: “The Achilles’ heel of the Revolution is the economy. But it can be actively supported, for example, by taking a holiday on the beaches of the southern Mediterranean.” Matthias Köberlein

Julia Tieke travels to Cairo regularly as a freelance journalist. Audio clips of her interview can be found on her blog.

Appeared in “Freitag” issue 14 and on freitag.de.

Photo: © Shawn Baldwin

ARTE in cooperation with Der Freitag

Jury Awards went to:

Free Syrian Blogger& Activist Razan Ghazzawi (Best Social Activism Campaign)

Harassmap (Best Use of Technology for Social Good)

  The BOBs’ User Prizes in 17 categories and 11 languages

The BOBs Awards
02. April – 02. Mai 2012

The „BOBs- Deutsche Welle Blog Awards“ are hold since 2004. Their main objectives: provide attention to blogs showing a special commitment to democracy, freedom of speech and quality of information.

The contest’s 11 languages are: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Furthermore, six prices will be given to the best overall blogs.

 More informations here

JURY

This years Arab member of the jury is Egyptian blogger Tarek Amr. He runs the Blog Kelmeteen and has been a member of  Global Voices Online since 2007.

>> See all the jury members

On 24th February, Abdelaziz Bouteflika even went as far as to compare the election on May 10th to the date of the start of the Algerian revolution : “People must take part in the election on 10th May. It is a historic event, as important as 1st  November 1954.” Even the death of Ahmed Ben Bella, the first President of independent  Algeria, on Wednesday 11th April 2012,  was used to persuade people to vote by commentators on national television, an instrument of government  propaganda. An indication of the extent to which the government fears high abstention. It is aware that concern about wide-scale electoral fraud leaves many Algerians sceptical.

Fear of fraud, calls to vote
Two commissions to oversee the elections have been set up to reassure people about potential fraud.  One is composed of magistrates carefully chosen by the Head of State,  the other is formed of representatives of the political parties taking part in the election and independent candidates. The first commission has the unfailing support of the official  institutions, the second complains of constraints and  contempt on the part of the government. Meanwhile, Algerian politicians are emerging from their torpor. Declarations, promises, surprising propositions, endless calls to vote or announcements of a boycott, Algerian politics is livening up, at least on the face of it. What do the voters think?  For Algerians who have turned their backs on politics for over two decades, the election incites little enthusiasm. And yet the election comes at a time of ongoing social upheaval and the arrival of several new political parties. These new formations have just been approved as part of the political reforms initiated by Président Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Following the riots and protest movements on the Algerian streets in Spring 2011, the Algerian president announced  openness and change.

Reforms which aren’t
Decided in April 2011,  the reforms depend on the revision of organic laws and the passing of new laws. On the agenda: modification of the electoral system, creation of new political parties, reorganisation of associations and  the media. Laws which are far from foremost in the minds of Algerians. But the process has started. The reforms, adopted by the Algerian  parliament in Autumn 2011 and  promulgated in January 2012, are supposed to encourage the emergence of new political forces. Over twenty new groupings have decided to play the game. But scepticism is the order of the day. Real democratic overture or political pretence to legitimise the election?

Forty parties
The Algerian political landscape, composed of around forty parties dominated by three main ideological tendencies, needs to get out of its current lethargy but no great shake-up is expected. The new groupings will no doubt merge into the mass and reinforce the stratification of the current political landscape.  First, the government camps, represented by the  FLN (National Liberation Front) and RND (National Rally for Democracy) rooted in the  government administration. Next, the Islamist camp, divided into several rival parties. And to finish, the democratic parties, also divided and incapable of forming a proper opposition. All these political groupings suffer from a lack of credibility and mistrust on the part of the voters. The new law on parties, officially, is aimed at renewing the political field, at least on the face of it. But it isn’t an easy task given that behind the majority of the new parties created, of which four are Islamist, hide  some old hands.

 Abstention, a threat to the government
According to Algerian political analyst Rachid Grim, “The new parties will only clutter the Algerian political scene,  and not significantly change the political field for the few seats they will gain and the associated advantages.” The new parties are not enthusing the population either. For the government, abstention is the real issue of this election. At the last election in 2007,  the turnout was only 35%.  And this year, it risks being even lower given the protests that have shaken Algeria for over a year.

An election in a time of social discontent
The process of reform started last January but not a week goes by without a road being closed  to express dissatisfaction with the local authorities, or someone setting themselves on fire to demand a job, housing or more social justice. Without counting the strikes called by the unions of lawyers, doctors, teachers and other professions demanding improved working conditions, increased salaries and the review of the governance system,. In short, neither the recent pay rises implemented to buy social peace nor President Bouteflika’s political reforms have managed to convince the Algerians. According to a poll conducted recently by a team of Arab and  American academics for research organisation Arab Barometer, 84.5% of Algerians are not interested in politics and 52% have no confidence in politics. The Algerian government is well aware of this and also that a high rate of abstention will discredit it on the  international scene. To escape a spring that could prove fatal, the executive power is determined to give credibility to this election. Its last resort faced with a disbelieving and disillusioned population: sending text messages to all citizens to motivate them and remind them that  “it is their duty to  vote “. The three mobile phone operators in Algeria have been asked to send text messages to all their subscribers. Messages that will quickly be deleted to prevent in-boxes becoming jammed. Algerians might have preferred a call, but calls are expensive.

Fella Bouredji for ARTE Journal

 Picture: CC flickr / mayanais