The spelling is wrong, another illustration of our trilingual illiteracy, but the question remains valid. “Where is our future?” it says. I took the below picture in Bejaia, and next to that wall were sitting five or six young men, in their twenties. They played with their mobile phones and commented on the girls who passed by.
If they’re not the authors of the question, they do not have the answer. I wonder if they’re looking for one. 
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I mentioned here that I would go through the suggestions NABNI has made and tell you my opinion about them, but I still haven’t managed to do it. I lack the time but also the motivation; I don’t believe anything good can possibly come from our mediocre and careless rulers, so I don’t think entrusting them to implement any idea and expecting stuff to go forward is something possible. Plus, I might flag most of the suggestions as irrelevant and not addressing the country’s real problems, but I wouldn’t give any alternative. And there of course I’d be accused of sterile criticism, etc. Anyway, this explains why I am not keen on the task. Unless of course I do like Bouteflika (who usually spends Ramadhan evenings hearing and scolding his ministers) and spend my Ramadhan evenings reading NABNI’s suggestions. Watch this space, you never know…
In the meantime, I am going to quote some excerpts from a novel I read recently and which talk about suggestions. The novel, titled “A fraction of the whole”, is written by Steve Toltz, and in the below excerpt we read a boy speaking. The boy decided to build a suggestions box which he placed in the town hall. Here are the excerpts. Continue reading
The “Arab spring” didn’t affect Algeria in the way many had hoped. There were of course some riots here and there (note that riots have been continuously erupting in Algeria for many years now), a number of men and women attempted to kill themselves, and some political parties and civil society representatives (every word here should be put between quotations) created the CNCD and wanted to copycat the Tahrir gatherings but the Algerian people didn’t follow them and they had to stop their movement a few weeks ago.
The Algerian pouvoir told us Algeria is not Tunisia or Egypt (which is ironic when you think of the times when this same pouvoir kept telling us we’re all “identical” Arabs and part of the Arab Nation) and that the riots had only social demands. So it was easy to stop them and satisfy these demands. And indeed, during the past months, every time somebody wanted something all they had to do was to launch a strike or gather before El Mouradia and abracadabra the government finds the money and solves the issue. But despite the purely social demands, the pouvoir decided to launch some political reforms as was promised in Bouteflika’s speech. I wonder if these political demands didn’t come from elsewhere, behind the sea and the ocean. But anyway, Ben Salah and El Mokh got busy during a few weeks and met with many Algerian personalities and organisations (the list compiled here by Algérie-Politique). And now they should shortly give their conclusions to the president who will decide of the next steps. Note here that it took longer than his Moroccan counterpart but I am afraid we will reach similar results: pseudo reforms to buy time.
So let’s forget this boring establishment (pouvoir and opposition alike) and consider the other alternatives, which is the object of this post. Continue reading
