Algeria: Bouteflika Retreats! Now Let Us Defeat His System!
Organize Committees of Action! For a General Strike and Popular Insurrection to bring down the regime! For a Workers and Poor Peasants Government!
Statement of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 12 March 2019, www.thecommunists.net
1. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) welcomes the first victory secured by the revolutionary masses in Algeria! On 11 March the 82-year-old president, long-time dictator, Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced that he will not seek a fifth term. This is a first concession to the demands of the people who have been on the streets since 22 February.
2. However, no one should be fooled: while making this concession, the ruling elite tries to keep the system – based on the trinity of political authorities, army, and the oil corporation, Sonatrach, in power. While not running for a fifth term, Bouteflika has also postponed the country's presidential elections (originally scheduled for 18 April) to an unknown date. Instead, he intends to convene a national conference to discuss political reforms and a new constitution for the country. The conference "will work to complete its mandate before the end of 2019". That means that Bouteflika will effectively stay on as president at least until the end of the year! The ruling elite wants to win time to manipulate a pseudo-transition process under its control!
3. The RCIT warns: this is an attempt of the ruling elite to keep their capitalist dictatorship in power. They might change the face at the top but not its essence! The task before revolutionary workers and students in Algeria is to continue and deepen the struggle with the opposite goal of bringing down the whole system! Workers, students, and poor peasants must organize themselves in committees of action at work places, neighborhoods, universities and villages. The people should overthrow the whole ruling elite by staging a nation-wide, indefinite, general strike leading to a popular insurrection. The goal must be the creation of a workers and poor peasants government based on popular committees of action. The insurgent masses should convoke a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly.
4. We repeat, it is crucial to replace not only a senile dictator but to smash the entire ruling elite – i.e. the capitalist army command that is closely interwoven with the wealthiest sectors of the bourgeoisie. We must learn the lesson of Egypt: if the military remains in power, the will smash any popular and democratic resistance with an iron fist and drown it in blood!
5. No one should have any illusions in the imperialist Great Powers, including France and other European governments. The corporations from the U.S, Europe, Russia and China are focused on the exploitation of Algeria’s huge oil and gas reserves. The European governments seek to bolster the capitalist regimes in North Africa (including the bloody dictatorship of General Sisi in Egypt) in order to stop migrants fleeing hunger and wars. The Great Powers, the army generals and the corporate bosses – they all work hand-in-hand against the insurgent people!
6. The RCIT calls on workers and popular movements internationally to rally in solidarity with the Algerian revolutionary masses! Let us unite this popular uprising with the ongoing liberation struggles in Syria, Palestine, Tunisia, Jordan, Iran, Yemen and other countries and work towards spreading the revolution to the entire Arab world and throughout the rest of Africa. Work towards connecting the insurgent masses of Algeria with the Yellow Vests in France!
7. The RCIT calls on activists to unite in a revolutionary party – in Algeria as well as internationally – based on a program of socialist liberation and solidarity with the struggles of workers and the oppressed in other countries. Join the RCIT in tackling this great task!
* Build committees of action at work places, neighborhoods, universities and villages!
* Create self-defense committees!
* Organize a general strike! Victory to the popular insurrection!
* For a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly!
* For a workers and poor peasants government!
* Forward to the second wave of the Arab Revolution! Long live the socialist world revolution!
* For a revolutionary party as part of a revolutionary world party!
International Secretariat of the RCIT
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See also the RCIT’s statement: Algeria: Victory to the Popular Insurgency against Bouteflika and his System! Organize Committees of Action! For a General Strike and Popular Insurrection to bring down the regime! For a Workers and Poor Peasants Government! 9 March 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/algeria-victory-to-the-popular-insurgency-against-bouteflika-and-his-system/