Algeria resorts to diplomatic pressure after the veto in the Peace and Security Council of the African Union

Algeria has been trying for some time to recover the seat on the African Union Peace and Security Council that Morocco has occupied for years. However, after failing to win a place on this council, and fearing a new defeat, Algeria deployed an ‘army of mediators’ with a clear mission: to ‘persuade’ other countries, as Hespress reports.

Last Wednesday, Algeria did not obtain the necessary number of votes, as countries refrained from supporting its candidacy, especially due to its open confrontations with several African countries, such as Mali.  

As a result of this African rejection of Algeria's candidacy for this important post, new elections will soon be organised, mainly because ‘no one on the African continent trusts this military regime’, adds the Moroccan media.  

These elections will take place during the ordinary summit of the African Union, scheduled for 15th and 16th February in Addis Ababa. On the Wednesday and Thursday before, there will be an ordinary session of the Executive Council (Ministers of Foreign Affairs), at which the new leadership of the African Union Commission is expected to be elected, through the election of five members of the Peace and Security Council. 

It is not the first time that Algeria has used the mediators' card to convince countries of its agendas, since 'this Algerian behaviour leads to the decline of an organisation that Algeria has used for years in the service of its hegemonic ambitions,' the media points out.  

In contrast, Morocco has managed to chair many African organisations. The most prominent is the African Peace and Security Council, breaking a long Algerian hegemony that distanced this organisation from its objectives and brought it closer to agendas supporting the thesis of secession in the Sahara. 

During this period, in which Morocco presided over the Council and which was characterised by an improvement in the roadmap, Algeria sought to recover what it had lost, forgetting ‘the change in African thinking’. 

Hespress sources confirmed that ‘with this behaviour, Algeria is undermining the legitimacy of important elections to reform the structure of the African organisation’. 

‘Instead of focusing on joint African cooperation and win-win partnerships, Algeria continues to promote the logic of blackmail and vote buying,’ it says.  

These changes come in the context of the intensification of Algiers' diplomatic isolation, with the escalation of the crisis with neighbouring countries in the Sahel region, the decline of influence in the Libyan question, the continuation of the crisis with Spain and France and the opening of a new front of dispute with the Syrian leadership.