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As expected, Abdemajid Tebboune is the new president of Algeria. Indeed, the president-elect won the elections with 58.15% of the vote, according to the primary results announced this Friday, December 13 by the president of the Independent National Election Authority (ANIE), who is set to disclose the latest official figures between the 16th and the 25th of the current month. The victory can in any case be announced, as the constitutional council is set to validate it in the coming days.
During the electoral campaign, then-candidate Tebboune was vocal regarding Morocco on the issue of the reopening of land borders. He was also very firm on the question of Western Sahara. «This is a decolonization case that must be settled by granting the right to self-determination», he told reporters.
Would he keep holding the same views, once at Al Mouradia Palace ? The question should receive an answer in the coming months.
Will Morocco be rewarded for its silence on the Hirak in Algeria ?
In the name of «non-interference» in the internal affairs of Algeria, as explained on March 16 in a declaration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Morocco has adopted silence vis-à-vis the protest marches. Instructions were also given to the official media, such as 2M channel who cancelled a program devoted to the Hirak marches.
No faux-pas has gone unpunished. The circumstances behind the former CGEM president’s «resignation» confirm it : Salaheddine Mezouar was pushed out just a few hours after another statement from the Department of Foreign Affairs, after speaking out on the protest movement in Algeria at a forum in Marrakech.
However, this line of «non-interference» in Algeria’s internal matters has not always been the policy followed by Morocco. Indeed, on March 20, 2014 at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Omar Hilale, then representative of the Kingdom to the UN in Geneva, affirmed that Ghardaïa «looks more like a battlefield with its burned houses, its looted stores, its inhabitants chased down and its instrumentalized socioreligious components». The capital of southern Algeria was, a few days before, the scene of bloody clashes between Arab and Amazigh groups.
On October 27, 2015 in New York, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the creation of the United Nations, a Moroccan diplomat argued for the rights of Kabyles to autonomy. The position was defended again via the same platform a week later.
These two strong and official interventions on two events which constitute internal affairs of Algeria are in contrast with the Moroccan silence observed with regard to the Algerian Hirak.
This silence is undoubtedly not fortuitous. It remains to be seen whether it will be appreciated at its fair value by new President Abdelmajid Tebboune and the Algerian army.
