A year since the start of the Algerian popular movement .. What is the outcome and prospects?

Victory with a taste of refraction
Errors during mobility
What awaits the movement?

Did the Algerian popular movement come a revised version of the Arab Spring revolutions? For a whole year of protest, the problems of the Arab Spring did not depart from the debate in the movement, and the stampede between the regime and the movement appeared in the form of those who relatively absorbed the spectacle of these revolutions, and each party tried to exclude the initial forms of violence and dragged the other side to the reactions fueling the conflict, something that gave the scene a kind Aesthetic and civilizational behaviors in dealing with events.

Hence, it was necessary to shed light on the course of events in order to determine the outcome of a full year of interactions, which might establish a revised model that combines revolutionary protest expression and protest practice that helps give an opportunity to reform the system.

Victory with a taste of refraction
Any objective observer of what happened - from February 22, 2019 until now - will not hesitate to describe what has been achieved so far as a victory, but what some people feel defeated and broken is the linking of the accomplished to the expectation that exceeded the ceiling of objectivity and achievability, which is the perception of the possibility of regime change that easy.

This constituted a kind of utopianism and romance in dealing with reality, but it was used to push and raise the street dynamic to produce a movement with a seemingly revolutionary momentum and a functional reform act. Therefore, confusion was always present between the revolutionary ceiling and the reformist roof.

Today, after the partial political decision by the Authority, we have found ourselves in front of a clearer and more susceptible scene to deal with the participating political act, after the phase of the rejectionist and boycotting political act.

It is sufficient for us to achieve an interim achievement that the movement removed the Algerians from the deadly recession, the absent hope and the defeatist psyche, and the fabricated political and societal scene, to enter us into a moving reality and real margins for change that can be expanded and invested, to gradually transform into serious precursors to regime change.

It is true that the movement failed to own the tools of change from within the system by liberating institutions and powers, but it succeeded with distinction in activating and employing tools of change from outside the system, on top of which are the street, the psyche of the citizen, communication networks, etc.

Perhaps the most important achievement of the popular movement is that it caused the breakdown of the regime, at the moment when the ruling elites were confused and disagreed on the nature of dealing with the movement;

Two former prime ministers, military zone leaders, and the legend of the intelligence service, retired General Tawfiq Medin, hundreds of the most senior officials, ministers, and businessmen in Algeria, as well as leaders of the presidential coalition that represented the ruling political party bloc, and heads of political parties were arrested.

Consequently, the shock of the movement prompted the regime - for the first time - to sacrifice its sons, after the same regime appointed the outraged ambassadors, transferred them to the parliament, or granted them the status of advisers. In all cases, the most severe punishment is to remove them from the center of the decision, while keeping the privileges of benefiting from rent from the womb of the regime’s institutions.

This trend marked a qualitative shift in the path of activating the dynamics of change, because the regime's controlling wing has addressed the purification process to satisfy the movement, at least on the surface, with the slogan of fighting corruption and eliminating the ruling gang.

This slogan was not a dream that the Algerians dreamed of as recognition from the heart of the system, that myths and narratives - which were marketed in the public talk about the extent of corruption, offense, and devastation in the state’s institutions and the body of the system - have become a reality that the ruling elites speak and emphasize each time, which is what has added Legitimacy - indisputable - on the authority of the demands of the movement and that it is the natural answer to the extent of treachery and corruption. Also, the ability to mobilize and recruit for a full year - despite all attempts by the system to tear the movement - could not stop its rotation.

The presence of deterrent models of the Arab Spring revolutions and the bloody experience of the 1990s in Algeria had an important role in raising the ceiling of the movement's awareness of the imperative of a commitment to peace, and closing all sections of withdrawing the movement to security equations in all its forms. This confirms that the slogans of the movement focused - from the first sight - on the rejection of the Syrian scenario of destruction and the Egyptian scenario leading to the political militarization of the government.

Errors during mobility
A large part of the Algerians who went out to the movement were not ready for this bet, and suddenly they found themselves facing the challenge of changing the system after they wished only to replace the sick president with a president who eats food and walks in the markets, because the Algerian regime is distinguished from other Arab regimes by being closer to the open dictatorial regime that prefers Soft tyranny over rough suppression.

He ruled that defamation rather than ruling violence, and ruling on bribing individual and factional society, and adopted the corruption system based on the distribution of rent and expanding the circle of corruption instead of oppression, and worked hard to raise its readiness for security institutions to intensify their numbers and equipment without the need to use them; on the contrary, it worked to improve the relationship between society and security institutions .

Hence, the objection to the Algerian regime almost turned into a luxury case, because a large part of the Algerians became involved with the corruption of the regime and began producing it indirectly. For this reason, we found today an objection to the system by organizing marches on Friday and Tuesday, and not following it with a class movement during the remaining days, as if the citizen admits his complicity with the regime and his lack of confidence in the current stage of change, and his urgent desire to produce change that leads to a better reality without wasting the current gains of individuals.

Perhaps the most important obstacles to the movement's success can be summarized as follows:
Inflating the power of the movement versus underestimating the power of the regime.
- Initial and permanent rejection of the idea of ​​framing the movement because of the fear of containing its leaders.
- Jumping on the previous struggle of many personalities and organizations by not recognizing the priority and precedence in the struggle, as if the dynamic and revolutionary scene had been born only from February 22.
- The excessive populism that complicated and excluded the discourse of rationality and demonstrated it as the appearance of cowards and those who are reckless to the might of the regime.
- The lack of functional control over the movement's slogans, which necessitated - at times - the divisive state, and the cultivation of apprehension and suspicion between the components of the movement and the ideological references of individuals.

Failure to battle tools and focus on the battle of slogans with the regime; while the system focused on controlling the tools of power at all levels, from executive powers, governance institutions and media institutions; the movement worked and was creative in the battle of slogans and persuasion without succeeding in conveying ideas to materialization in the field , To discover - after a while - that achieving change requires the approval of the regime, that is, the mental transition from the revolutionary to the reformative state.

- The movement was also formed in a state of reactions to the decisions and outputs of the system and was unable to move from the initiative level, to be confined to a mass of rejections and objections to the projects of the system.

Consequently, after a year of mobility, we can talk about the retreat of the dream of change in favor of the inevitability of achieving change. Every day, we discover the truth of things in Algeria. Accountability of authority and security institutions, led by the military, party, union, civil society, elites, etc., and subjecting everyone to a bitter investigation, ended relatively by revealing the size of the crisis at various levels.

Certainly, the authority was able to transfer the context from the revolutionary endowment to the narrow reformist corridor, which was considered a success for the authority and a failure for the movement, when it was unable to disrupt the holding of the presidential elections that created a new political reality and relatively rested the system. However, from the other side of the positive path of the stampede, we sometimes need some failure and failure to know the reality of things, because the logic of things requires that the strong in the battle of tools win against the strong in the battle of slogans.

What awaits the movement?
The second year of the popular movement will not be as much as the weight of the previous year, in which the movement benefited from the factor of surprise and shock to which the regime was exposed, and from the sharp division within the centers of power and decision-making, which led to its relatively breaking.

Hence, the movement will find - in its second year - many challenges, the most prominent of which is the restoration of the system to the initiative, especially after the passage of the presidential elections, and the solution to the problem of constitutional legitimacy that gave the regime a hand to invest in the pot of the movement, and absorb part of its components as individuals and groups.

Moreover, the authority has surpassed the threat of total and radical change, and today the movement is gradually moving towards a non-framed pressure block, which works to disrupt the regime's projects and disrupt its strategies. The resources of the movement have declined and the productive environment of the objection is no longer that motivated.

It is sufficient that the authority today adopted the speech of the movement and its demands to a degree that we no longer differentiate between the discourse of the regime and the discourse of the movement, which reduced the movement's ability to mobilize words and slogans, and became closer to expressing reactions to what is issued by the system.

Hence, the movement lost - for a while - the ability to initiate because the authority strived to prevent it from acquiring the tools of influence, and worked - permanently - to reduce areas of influence, including assemblies, marches and various mechanisms of expression, including the exercise of pressure and closure at the level of social networks.

It remains for the movement to take advantage of the opportunity not to arrange the house of the system, and its urgent need to use a part of it to send concrete and important changes, but it does not rise to the level of regime change. This approach will help to create frameworks from the womb of the group, to participate in regime change from within the system.

The popular movement needs - at the level of its aspirations - to mature leadership elites that lead it towards achieving the achievement, rather than turning into a mere echo of what is repeated in the arenas. I believe that the conditions for a democratic transition are mostly ready, waiting for those who invest them, and turning margins into a reality that is constantly improving, and this will only come with leadership capable of producing meaning, anticipating events, reading balances, gathering resources, skills, energies and building strategies.

In short: The regime will not change; rather, it will modify its authoritarian version in a way that makes it more acceptable to many social groups, and the citizen's behavior will not change towards the best on the short and medium levels, because he will remain hesitant and will not trust the nature of the stage, which will push him to preserve his previous gains.

Gradually, the movement will move from the character of societal objection to the nature of political objection, so that future participants will be limited to the influential and informal political society, and those who do not care about politics will withdraw, because the next context requires a long breath in the absence of bets from which the movement was nourished in its first year.