Algeria: chronicles of a "badly treated" democracy

To propose the "History" of certain years by starting with the changes in the management of the press organs is closer to reality than one might think."The continuation of the democratic opening is dependent on the quality of the transformations which are carried out in the sector of the Information... "wrote in El Moudjahid, dated May 20, 1990, Ammar Belhimer, a "reformist" journalist, very close, it was said, to the Head of Government, who became leader of the Hamrouchian wing of what remained of the Algerian Journalists' Movement (Mja), the first director of the daily newspaper El Watan, and then promoter of a weekly newspaper, La Semaine d'Algérie, and, later, of a daily newspaper, La Nation. This was a deliberate exaggeration of the role of information in the process in order to cover up any criticism of the changes in men. But this judgment remains relatively true on the theoretical level, free and transparent information, independent justice and separate powers being the essential pillars of a democratic life with a certain minimum credibility.