 HISTORY |
Important Dates since the Independence / historical personalities
 Important dates from the independence |
5 July 1962: Proclamation of the Algerian independent state.
8 September 1963: Adoption of the new constitution; the FLN is considered as the sole legal political party (which will be amended in 1976, 1989 and 1996).
24 February 1971: President Boumediène declares that the hydrocarbons sector will be nationalised, Algeria implements an industrial policy and an agrarian reform of a socialist type.
5 October 1988: Popular revolution in Algiers, Oran and other important cities of centre Algeria. More than 500 persons are killed in Algiers. President Chadli Bendjedid makes promises of reforms. It is the beginning of mutipartism set up by the new constitution of 1989.
11 January 1992: Second run of the legislative elections which was going to give the majority to the Fis (islamist) is cancelled. Resignation of President Chadli Bendjedid and creation of the high state council, a collegial direction directed by Mohamed Boudiaf who will be assassinated six months later. The same year, the Fis is banned, and this political party starts the army insurrection. The country is plunged into chaos.
11 January 1994: General Liamine Zéroual is appointed president, in a state of emergency and economical decline. GDP per inhabitant goes from 2.722$ in 1987 to 1.506$ in 1994, meanwhile the unemployment reaches 25% of the labour force. Also first negotiations with the I.M.F for the implementation of the structural readjusting plan which will lead to the stability of macro-economical indicators and a social cost of 400.000 lost jobs.
16 November 1995: First pluralist presidential elections organised. Liamine Zeroual is elected by a strong vote from the electorate. First offensive of the army against the terrorist Maquis.
5 June 1997: Organisation of legislative elections. All parties took part, apart from the Fis which was disbanded.The first pluralist assembly of the country is created.
16 April 1999: Presidential elections and victory of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Born in 1935, took part in the independence war and was Minister of the Foreign Affairs under Boumediène mandate from 1965 to 1980. His programme focused on the peace restoration in a country which counted more than 100.000 victims due to the war, and the return of Algeria on the international scene.
16 September 1999: A law about "concorde civile"of President Boutelika is adopted by a majority of 98,63% (85,06% voters) after having been voted by the deputies and the senators in July the same year. The law was to amnesty all islamist militants who stopped fighting before January 13, 2000 and who did not commit blood crimes, rape, firing, and bombing in public places . 7.000 terrorists deposed their arms.
21 January 2000: Government programme drafted by Bouteflika is mainly about reforms and liberalisation in all sectors, included the hydrocarbons sector, considered for a long time national sovereignty.
22 May 2000: After a slight dispute between Algiers and Rabat, Bouteflika accuses Morocco of sheltering terrorists on its territory, after the attempt of murder by the GIA at Béchar, close to the Moroccan frontiers. War of communiqués, then things settled down after a meeting of the Home Secretaries from both countries.
18 August 2000: 35th OUA summit in Algiers. Bouteflika is elected president of the organisation for a year and initiates the return of Algeria on the African scene with Ethiopia and Eritrea as his priority.
6 December 2000: Head of government Ahmed Benbitour resigns and reveals a weak consensus around the rhythm of privatisation. Ali Benflis, then general secretary of the president, is appointed at the head of the government .
4 April 2001: Violent riots in Kabylia as result to the death of a young scholar killed by policemen. Citizens' comittees set up a list of claims to president Bouteflika.
19 December 2001: Initials of the association's agreement between Algeria and the European Union in Brussels. A four year deadline is announced before the implementation.
16 January 2002: Discussions about Algeria's membership to the WTO started again.
| 18 February 2002: The constitution is amended and tamazight is introduced as a national language.
30 May 2002: The FLN, headed by Ali Benflis, gets absolute majority at the national assembly as a result of the legislative elections, during which the abstention rate reached a record of 56% of the electorate . Benflis is appointed as head of government.
16 June 2002: Bouteflika participates to the G8 summit in Canada to defend the NAPED (New African partnership for the Economic Development)
5 July 2002: 40th anniversary of the national independence.
| Historical personalities |
Barberousse brothers: Arroudj and Kheireddine were both famous sons of a Turkish potter. In 1504, both moved to the north African coast, to Djerba, and developped there a successful activity: racing. They became so famous that in 1510, the government of Bejaïa asked Arroudj to help against the Spanish invaders. In 1516, the inhabitants of Algiers called him to liberate them from the constant Spanish threat. Arroudj pounded the Penon, the Iberian guard siege, but failed. He moved to the Governance of Algiers after having murdered king Salim Toumi. A territorial conquest started then for Arroudj: Tenès, Miliana, Tlemcen, etc. Irritated by such success, the Spanish eliminated him during an ambush. Kheireddine followed the activities of his brother. He is at the origin of the creation of the Algiers Regency and became a great admiral of the Ottomane fleet. He managed to get under the sovereignty of the sultana of Constantinople and took benefit from a military and financial aid. Kheireddine came back to Algiers to fight against its invaders ; he created the port of Algiers by binding the islands to the land. He then conquered Tunisia, from which he was dislodged by the army of Charles V. Some times later, he was at the head of the maritime operations against Charles Quint and Venise. Kheireddine successfully participated during ten years to the glory of the Turkish Army, fighting against Europe of the Christianity.
L'Emir Abdelkader: Considered by the historians as the founder of the Algerian modern state, the Emir Abdelkader is born near Mascara, around 1807. Recognised sovereign by several tribes of the west and the centre of the country, he led "the holy war" against the French army from 1832 to 1847. Despite the Tafna treaty, a historical truce is signed in 1837, the battles between his troops and those of the invaders began again some years after. After the seizure of his army (called Smala) by the Duke of Aumale in 1843 and the defeat of the sultana of Morocco, his ally, on the Isly (1844), he had to give in due to the reddition in 1847. Liberated in 1852, he withdrew to Damas with his family, in Syria, where he protected the Christian Maronites during the massacres of 1860. The Emir Abdelkader died in Syria in 1883. Numerous of his literary and poetry works are still unknown.
Messali Hadj: Also called the father of the Algerian nationalism and the most important figure of the political movement in the first years of the 20th century. He was a great orator and a charismatic character, his political fight officialy started in Paris, in 1926 with the creation of the Etoile Nord Africaine (ENA), after an intense militant career amongst the representatives of the Algerian, Tunisian, and Morocco communities. After several years of political imprisonment, he went back to Algeria where he founded in 1937 the PPA (the Algerian political party), which was banned while Messali was arrested again. In 1946, he created the MTLD (Liberties and Democratic Triumph Movement) which led, through the OS (Special Organisation), to the creation of the FLN in 1954 and the national liberation war. He was militant for the major part of his life and spent time in jail for having confronted the colonial order. His hesitation to join the armed struggle launched by the FLN in 1954 has remained a very controversial episode in the history of the National Algerian Movement .
Abdelhamid Ibn Badis: President of the association of the Ouléma (theologian reformers, founded in 1931), he was born in Constantine in 1889 and founded with other personalities the reforming stance of the Muslim thought in Algeria, which teaches Coran and Arabic as a means to counter the settlers'culture, but also as a fight against ignorance and popular beliefs (Marabouts) considered as a bad interpretation of Islam. Its creation edited, from 1925, several political and religious publications (El Mountakid, El Bassaïr, Echihab…) and was during two decades a centre of enlightenment of the Islamic thought. Orator whose quotations have had an impact in history, Abdelhamid Ibn Badis (who passed away in 1940), is also the author of numerous texts and committed poetry, amongst which the best known (taught at school), underlines Islam and the Arab as two principal identity referents of the Algerian people (" the Algerian people is Muslim and belongs to Arabity") it also takes up a position for the amazigh referent " I am an Amazigh converted into an Arab by Islam". |
