Manifesto for a Constitution of the Sovereign People
Algeria is living a historic and decisive stage that the Algerian people as a whole began on February 22, 2019, demanding the departure of a political system made up of men, institutions and practices that have produced ineffectiveness, bad governance, injustice and corruption since 1962. The Algerians have loudly proclaimed istiqlâl as one of the flagship demands of this peaceful popular revolution, as the sovereignty of the people in the first place was systematically flouted and that of the nation hindered by the illegitimacy of a power capable of all the compromises to maintain itself.
The people in action helped to upset the unstable balance of a militarized regime which was forced to reveal itself and then change its civil facade. The mobilized people challenge all legitimacy to this authoritarian power and have expressed it publicly and consistently since February 2019. The people demand a radical change of system, "Yetnahaw Gaa", the establishment of a new system of governance, with independent justice and in which the people will be the only source of legitimacy. Algerian men and women want effective citizenship within the framework of the rule of law, a civil and non-military state and rejects paternalism, which with its "enlightened" good will grants "timid advances".
llegitimate power cannot be the source of legal and institutional legitimacy
The May 2020 constitutional amendment project emanates from illegitimate power. However, the question of the legitimacy of power in Algeria has never been settled since 1962. It is therefore inconceivable that an illegitimate power can dictate the fate of a people and conduct public affairs. The legitimacy of the institutions is disputed by the current tenant of El Mouradia himself, "elected" under extraordinary conditions; the height of incongruity, he denigrates a Parliament which will nevertheless adopt this constitutional revision.
This illegitimate act emanating from an illegitimate power is effectively null and void. This revision comes at a time when fierce repression is engaged against the militants of Hirak. Arrests, arbitrary sentences and orderly obstructions to the exercise of freedoms are the response of this power to the people whose agreement it claims to seek. How can we believe that someone who violates human rights and tramples on freedoms can claim to open a debate within society? How can the debate and the expression of the people be free under such conditions! In reality, the authorities have simply assumed the right to impose the fundamental law of the country, a large part of which formally consecrates rights and freedoms which it denies to Algerian citizens.
In this case, this project only resolves the internal contradictions of an anachronistic power. In no case can it satisfy the demands of Hirak, which are popular demands. These processes can only produce the same policies, the same practices and the same methods of managing public affairs. It will suffer the same fate as previous power projects, it will have no effect. The history of our country, dominated today by a military-financial oligarchy, shows us that the proponents of power have always considered themselves as the guardians of the people whose sovereignty they recognize only formally and theoretically.
Since the first Algerian constitution, the constitutions and laws of the "Republic" which flow from them are formal and largely ineffective texts which serve to create the illusion of institutions founded on law and governed by it. In reality, they neither enshrine the rule of law claimed by the Hirak, nor the necessary transparency in power relations, its checks and balances. Ultimately, they are in no way the imperatives of the modern state, but screens that the deep state uses to perpetuate an autocratic and repressive system, denied all legitimacy and all legality.
The Constituent Assembly, a historic demand of the national movement
To break with the regime is to break with men and a system of governance, it is also to break with its method of drawing up the Constitutions. This authoritarian Constitution stemming from the ideology of single thought is part of the tradition of Zaïmism. It is, in fact, backed by, rather than emanating from, the control instruments of society, thus losing measure of the structural evolution of Algerian society.
Since February 22, 2019, Algerian society has been constantly reclaiming its history and the figures who made it. It expresses its desire to appease memories, to heal wounds, to assume its pluralism and thus to reconnect with an old claim of the national movement in its different components: "the Constituent Assembly". Since 1933, for the North African Star (ENA) then the Party of the Algerian People (PPA), through the addendum to the Manifesto of the Algerian people of 1943, it is closely associated with the independence of Algeria, the istiqlâl, which the people still demand today.
On independence, the historic FLN had a National Constituent Assembly elected in September 1962, which was quickly deprived of its rights. She was abused and deprived of the fullness of her powers in 1963 with the same authoritarian methods as today. It was put on the fait accompli, a text drawn up by "experts", chosen by the executive power outside the Assembly, was adopted at the Majestic cinema, then imposed on the elected representatives of the people, causing the withdrawal of eminent members of the National Constituent Assembly, including its president Ferhat Abbas.
In March 1976, while a "group of experts" was preparing for Colonel Boumediene a tailor-made constitution after a long period of suspension of the previous constitution, the two former presidents of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), Ferhat Abbas and Benyoucef Ben Khedda, the former number two of the association of Ulemas, Sheikh Mohamed Kheireddine, as well as the former secretary general of the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD), Hocine Lahouel, co-signed a manifesto calling for return to popular legitimacy through a Constituent Assembly resulting from free elections. This manifesto was supported by the Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) of Hocine Aït Ahmed, by the Party of the Socialist Revolution (PRS) of Mohamed Boudiaf as well as Moufdi Zakaria and so many other illustrious militants of the national movement.
The Constituent Assembly, an institutional extension of the popular revolution which advocates sovereignty
The Constituent Assembly is the most political response to one of the most politically charged effects of our popular revolution. The Hirak, which is popular, national, massive and constant, claims that the sovereignty of the people is not a theoretical affirmation but a concrete reality. The Constituent Assembly also corresponds best to another characteristic of Hirak: its horizontal character which insists on collective political action and which repudiates the authoritarian militarized regime as well as any form of zaïmism or political tutelage, whether civil or military, Algerian or foreign. It expresses an aspiration of Hirak: a people united around clear political objectives of democratization and citizenship and which assumes its pluralism and its diversity in a peaceful and determined approach in the respect of its ancestral values. The election of a Constituent Assembly is the best way for the people to be and remain the main political actor, which they self-determine by debating and choosing a social and democratic pact based on effective citizenship and freedoms. This path was adopted by several countries when they left the dictatorship.
With a Constituent Assembly, the people are present permanently and at all stages of the establishment of the Constitution. It elects its representatives from all regions of the country and currents of thought to the Constituent Assembly; it participates, through its representatives and public debates, in the work of drafting the Constitution and, finally, the last word belongs to it since it decides, at the end of a pluralist and open campaign, by free referendum and transparent on the draft Constitution drawn up by its representatives. This strong demand from the people will give shape to the stages of the democratic transition that must be clearly defined to reverse the political balance of power and make the Constituent Assembly the key moment in the democratic and sovereign exercise of the Algerian people. It will in fact open the door to a new, democratic and plural Algeria.
The Constituent Assembly will thus be that of ALL Algerians. Because written by and for the people, the legitimate Constitution which it will draft will consecrate the material and real sovereignty of the people, while the proclamation of the civil and democratic State respectful of individual and collective freedoms will make it possible to turn the page of this Deep state that stifles and shatters the aspirations of the people since the summer of 1962.
We claim to be "appealing to the Algerian people"
We make ours this call of 1976, still current, co-signed in its time by Ferhat Abbas, Benyoucef Ben Khedda, sheikh Mohamed Kheireddine and Hocine Lahouel and relayed by so many others:
“In our time such power is an anachronism.
The solution of our internal as well as external problems requires the exercise of popular sovereignty. It is not a matter of wanting to impose a national charter on the country as plans to do so the president of the Council of the Revolution, in order to institutionalize his power. Only one way remains open for the preparation of this charter: a public debate, at the national level, of a sovereign constituent National Assembly […].
It is in this Assembly that the representatives freely elected by the people can translate into law the legitimate aspirations of the nation. Any other charter established in secret from the antechambers of power could only be null and void.
Algerians, Algerians!
The colonial regime that we mobilized against had humiliated us. He had forbidden us in our own country the exercise of national sovereignty by limiting us to food and economic problems.
Since our independence, the regime of personal power has gradually led us to the same condition of subjects, without freedom and without dignity. This subordination is an insult to the very nature of man and the Algerian in particular. It is an attack on his personality.
This is why men, activists of good will, met to denounce this state of things and put an end to the indignation which strikes us. They call on Algerians to fight to:
To elect by the people, freely consulted, a Constituent and Sovereign National Assembly. "
The solution of our internal as well as external problems requires the exercise of popular sovereignty. It is not a matter of wanting to impose a national charter on the country as plans to do so the president of the Council of the Revolution, in order to institutionalize his power. Only one way remains open for the preparation of this charter: a public debate, at the national level, of a sovereign constituent National Assembly […].
It is in this Assembly that the representatives freely elected by the people can translate into law the legitimate aspirations of the nation. Any other charter established in secret from the antechambers of power could only be null and void.
Algerians, Algerians!
The colonial regime that we mobilized against had humiliated us. He had forbidden us in our own country the exercise of national sovereignty by limiting us to food and economic problems.
Since our independence, the regime of personal power has gradually led us to the same condition of subjects, without freedom and without dignity. This subordination is an insult to the very nature of man and the Algerian in particular. It is an attack on his personality.
This is why men, activists of good will, met to denounce this state of things and put an end to the indignation which strikes us. They call on Algerians to fight to:
To elect by the people, freely consulted, a Constituent and Sovereign National Assembly. "
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