By Arezki Daoud – Editorial for 4 December 2019: It’s no secret that one of the top jobs of an ambassador is to get to know the key political stakeholders in the country where they are assigned. So for Germany, the UK, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Saudi Arabia and others, getting to know Azzedine Mihoubi, the candidate to the Algerian presidential election, is entirely normal, and even expected. It is part of being an ambassador. I would have done the same thing, because after all, Mihoubi is the man of the day, the new front runner. He has now the backing of a great number of generals in the junta’s military command, and the guy who used to be number one, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has lost ground. Remember, they visited him too, thinking that is the chosen one. Now he’s lost the sympathy of the military, and so for now, he is no longer number one. But with Algerian politics handled by one or two generals turned-amateur-politicians, one never knows… Tebboune could return if he convinces General Gaid Salah to let him back.
In any case, if I were ambassador, yes I would like to meet the candidates and have a nice mint tea and discuss what’s in their mind. But there is a decorum and a protocol to follow in doing so. A protocol that the ambassadors of Germany, Ms. Ulrike Knotz, the UK’s Barry Lowen, Belgium’s Pierre Gillon, Holland’s Robert Van Embden, Spain’s Fernando Morano and many others have clearly broken. Today, 4 December, these ambassadors either pledged support to Mihoubi directly, or they got trapped. The images and videos coming from their meeting are pathetic. They are now being used by candidate Mihoubi and the Algerian intelligence not just to undermine the morale of the campaigns of those he is competing against, which in international law would represent meddling in another country’s elections, but his
marketing machine is sending direct insults to the great people of Algeria. These European ambassadors know better than all of us combined that after nine months of peaceful rallies, the Algerian people as a whole refuse to be governed by another group of men tied to the former regime. And Mihoubi is one them. You don’t have to graduate from the Kennedy School of Government to know that the Algerian people refuse the next administration to be under the boots of the disgraceful nationalist party known as RND or FLN. Mihoubi runs RND. The Algerian people want what the European people have long enjoyed and that is the chance to live in a democratic system, not under the fear of getting arrested by the DRS and the Mukhabarat and get tortured and
killed. You don’t have to have the brain of a Winston Churchill to know that what is happening today in Algeria is simply sowing the seeds of instability and chaos in the region. Ambassadors: you know that. Yet, you had the guts to meet with not a president, but an obscure puppet candidate with questionable records, all behind close doors.
I understand the need to speak in private. But doing it after taking so many pathetic photos and videos can only give the impression that you are in cahoots with the generals in their efforts to maintain dictatorship. Even if it is not case, the people are quick to judge. What happened to the great pride of the German and Dutch diplomats? What happened to the pragmatism of
the British diplomacy? I understand the Saudi position, a country where democracy does not exist, and so of course the Saudi ambassador would visit the future king of Algeria. But Europe? The beacon of modernity and human rights?
It is stunning how your act has made a mockery of the concept of diplomacy. There is nothing diplomatic about what you did, and a impartial court of law would call this “aiding and abetting in the commission of a crime.” If you were not aware that photos and videos were going to be used for campaigning purposes and for countering the Hirak pro-democracy movement, then you all deserve to get fired… But again your bosses must have told you to toe the line because the stakes are high in the energy sector and so who cares about democracy in Algeria.