El delirio de Tebboune
The same decor is planted and the two actors have kept the same dress. The tenant of the palace of El-Mouradia has let loose in an unprecedented delirium.
Never seen. A head of state who agrees to have his interview broadcast on a YouTube channel that has barely 10,000 subscribers when he was hoping to be on the major international satellite channel followed by millions of viewers. Abdelmadjid Tebboune did not know, certainly, that the parody in which he had indulged with his accomplice Khadija Benguenna had a limited audience. The Algerian president believes, after all, to have had the opportunity to express himself an international media that has accepted his condition not to mention the Moroccan neighbor and not to be contradicted by the journalist he called, when he was Minister of Housing under Bouteflika, laudatory in the pay of foreigners, in response to the status she had posted on his Facebook page calling him a "coward. Reconciled, the Algerian president and the journalist, also Algerian, of the Qatari channel have engaged in a real parody giving free rein to rantings without limit.
The feat of creating 55,000 jobs by 2027
Addressing his favorite issue, that of the economy, which he masters, however, very poorly, Abdelmadjid Tebboune boasts of the results and prospects of his economic policy by announcing the upcoming accession of Algeria to BRICS. This group of five countries considered as the current great emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have engaged in reforms allowing them to integrate into the global economy, including education, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and business creation.
While it does not manage to place itself in the top 10 economies of African countries, how can we imagine Algeria in a group of countries whose weight in world growth will increase from 20% in 2003 to 40% in 2025? It is not with the project to create 55,000 jobs by 2027, as stated by Tebboune in this interview, that we can claim to play in the big league. "13,000 private Algerian investors are waiting to invest 30 billion dollars between 2023 and 2027 to create 55,000 jobs, he says. He does not seem to measure the weakness of the figure in a country that has 2 million unemployed according to his own statements.
This is not the best way to aspire to ensure an economic development of a country that reaps hundreds of billions annually from its hydrocarbon resources. For a country that is the 17th largest oil producer, 10th largest natural gas producer and 7th largest natural gas exporter in the world, the figures put forward by Tebboune do not augur well for a flourishing future for a people that is struggling to feed itself properly. However, Algeria's oil reserves rank 15th in the world and its natural gas reserves rank 13th.
The reality of Algeria seems to escape completely to a president who does not feel the slightest embarrassment in his ramblings by explaining the high cost of living by the desire of Algerians to compare to European countries and not to its immediate environment (meaning its Moroccan neighbor).
Tebboune goes further by explaining that the high cost of food is a sign of wealth. It is hard to believe such assertions made by a head of state. And to further emphasize the point, he declares without any embarrassment and without giving any figures that the average income of the Algerian is two and a half times higher than its neighbors (always alluding to Morocco).
Of the shortages of basic necessities, of the long queues for a bag of semolina or a bag of one liter of milk, of the dryness of household taps and the rationing of water supply, Tebboune does not breathe a word. It is an idyllic picture that he paints of a new Algeria governed by old figures and from which young people escape by the thousands on board makeshift boats at the risk of their lives.
Serious accusation against Morocco
By addressing the section of Algeria's relations with neighboring countries excluding, of course, Morocco, Abdelmadjid Tebboune had difficulty containing his hatred for the western kingdom that seemed to haunt his mind throughout the interview. He did not hesitate to throw spikes from time to time. Until he delivered the blow with an accusation of extreme gravity for both countries.
Without naming Morocco, he clearly insinuated that the kidnapping, on April 5, 2012, of the Algerian consul and six of his collaborators in Gao in northern Mali, was the work of a terrorist organization, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), created by a known neighboring country. This neighboring country can be neither Tunisia nor Niger nor Mali. So follow the gaze of the Algerian president. It can only be Morocco.
This accusation is serious for Morocco (that's why he was careful not to mention it) but especially for Algeria, which is a victim who has shown cowardice by keeping silent about the death of two of its citizens, even though it knows who committed the crime. This happened under Bouteflika. And now that Tebboune knows it, would he continue to show cowardice without bringing the case before international bodies to ask for reparation and especially to have this sworn enemy condemned by the UN Security Council?
Let's bet a devalued dinar that this will not happen. The Algerian president was, quite simply, in a delirium without limit and did not measure the seriousness of his words. For this reason, neither Morocco nor the Algerian people would take into account everything that was said in this parody of an interview given to a podcast with a very limited audience.