These remarks, made during an interview broadcast by Algerian public media, fall outside the bounds of diplomacy and the responsibility expected of a head of state. Above all, they reflect the discomfort of a beleaguered power, incapable of acknowledging its own political, economic, and institutional failures, and seeking external scapegoats to divert the attention of an increasingly disillusioned public opinion.
Accusing a sovereign state of electoral interference while refusing any transparency regarding elections that are widely contested domestically represents a blatant contradiction. The Algerian regime, born out of elections that are tightly controlled, supervised, and devoid of genuine democratic competition, thus attempts to portray itself as a victim while denying its own people, for decades, the right to real political alternation.
More troubling still, Abdelmadjid Tebboune crossed an additional threshold by referring to threats of international arbitration related to Emirati investments in Algeria, adopting a defiant and almost vengeful tone: “Let them go to arbitration!” This statement reveals a climate of legal insecurity maintained by the Algerian authorities themselves, one that drives away investors and further weakens an economy already dependent on energy rents.
Algiers’ hasty decision to unilaterally terminate the air transport agreement binding the two countries since 2013 fits into the same logic of impulsive rupture, characteristic of a regime that confuses sovereignty with isolation and firmness with sterile agitation. Official Algeria prefers to break international agreements rather than engage in self-criticism.
Behind this verbal escalation lies a deeper reality: that of a military regime incapable of proposing a credible political project, living in constant fear of any external influence, whether real or imagined, and obsessed with control rather than reform. By attacking the United Arab Emirates, Tebboune merely exposes the fragility of a power that governs through permanent tension and the rhetoric of an enemy.
This new episode confirms a recurring pattern. As long as Algeria remains trapped in a system dominated by military circles, it will continue to multiply external crises to avoid confronting the only question that truly matters: that of democratic legitimacy and accountability to its own people.
Translated from Abderrazzak Boussaid’s French article – le7tv