Some points in President Bouteflika’s speech made recently before Algerian executives need to be underlined, especially as words sometimes go beyond “verbal slip-up”, words he did utter and affirm breaking off the assistance’s routine silence. That was the main feature of the first part of the president’s speech. Attention is initially drawn by the State’s first magistrate’s acknowledgment in which he said “he was in collision, along with some of his ministers, in the consecration of regionalism, and decided so to put a limit to his complicity”.

Such statements would have been seemed ordinary if they were made by a political or a party opposition figure, but made explicitly by the president himself, who has prerogatives of appointing, discharging, ordering and banning as well, they do generate two main questions: either the president completely ignores the phenomenon that has become a part of the citizen’s life at the extent that is threatening national unity, or the president does know and is aiding and abetting, as he himself said. This is a tragedy even if the president has been so politically courageous to explicitly announce it. In both cases, it is an official confession from the State’s first magistrate that regionalism is real and fairly exists at the higher spheres of the regime.

The second point I want to underline is related to hydrocarbons. Here, the statement was more obvious; he said “I had made a mistake as regard hydrocarbon law, and I made it up… “, this is a second courageous attitude he should be praised for.

However, when the press opened a debate over the jeopardy that the hydrocarbons law-first version was representing, the regime and its “supporter committees” described the law’s opponents as non-patriotic and even accused them of high treason… is the president’s bravery enough to rehabilitate those people?... They proved to be right, and their opponents were wrong…

The last yet very sensitive point concerns the dual nationality people the president accused of giving the cold shoulder to their country saying “we no more can differ between Algerians and non Algerian”. This is a serious confession especially as some senior officials have dual nationality while appointments in such positions are preceded by deep investigations by different security bodies, before presidential decrees are issued in that direction… So, where is the blot? Did security bodies mislead the president, or had he a hand in this, too?

Last but not least… we need to have actions following such dangerous statements, especially as the president gets prerogatives allowing him to take urgent decisions putting a limit to such phenomena that imperil the state…

Mr President, your courage… is not enough !!