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What I feared most happened. I was asked to give my opinion on the upcoming April 9 presidential election. I thought about it very seriously and frankly, I found nothing to say. Besides, it is dangerous to say anything. Recess has ended, and it is time to line up, so to speak. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika will be re-elected, period. He decided it, and that’s the end of it.

What more to say? Once the small formality of the polls has passed, he will grab again his scepter and will do what he has always done. Ditto for the Algerians, they will put their voter registration cards back in their drawers and do what they have always done. A gesture forged by decades of practice. After eight triumphant presidential elections since the birth of the Democratic and People’s Republic of Algeria in July 1962, everyone knows what to do. It’s like a walk in the park.

To state this in one sentence, I would borrow a phrase coined by the famous Canard Enchaîné about some basic reform initiated by the government of one of Algeria’s dictators. It might be the second (Houari Boumediene 1965-1978) or third one (Chadli Ben Djedid 1979-1992). The phrase goes: “the government pretends to increase wages and the Algerians pretend to work.” I would then modify it in this context as follows: “In Algeria, the auto-proclaimed president pretends to be candidate, and the Algerians pretend to vote.”

But did I really need to say this? Even people in the North Pole know this. This, in fact, has been known for so long that in the end one undoubtedly forgets it. By squeezing one’s head, perhaps an image could possibly emerge. That image is Algeria, Algérie! That remote land which is full of misery. But forced memories like corpses that resurface, we all know what that is. They don’t tell the whole story. Who are these putrefied corpses that discharge out of the mass graves of destiny? Who are these torn up corpses that Mare Nostrum carts from one bank to another like industrial waste, and these skeletons that fall from the closets, who are they? Who put them there, why, when, and how?

And who are these poor people who scream in the cellars? What have they done? Because that is what misery means: people dying like dogs, and people mourning them in secret. It means people who deteriorate after having vomited so much. It also means to come across with your torturer and your friends’ assassins each day in your own neighborhood and have to greet them or look down so as not hurt their feelings in accordance with the Law for National Reconciliation. Finally it means to make no pretence of anything and just go your own way.

Misery is to be ashamed of oneself, of one’s country and of humanity. It is this country that Mr. Bouteflika governs since independence, as a second in command from 1962 to 1979, as the man of the shadows from 1980 to 1998, and like a senile king from 1999 to date, and he intends to control it until his death.

We would like to be able to ask him why his kingdom is filled with criminals who are protected by the law, and so many poverty-stricken and persecuted people who hug the walls. Because the story is back in the news, I would ask him what he intends to do with Ali André Mécili’s assassin. A companion of Ahmed Aït-Ahmed, Mr. Mécili was shot with three bullets in the head in Paris in April 1987.

Doesn’t he know this? His name is Abdelmalek Amellou. He currently enjoys a very quiet and undisturbed life in Algiers, not far from his presidential palace. Why did he not deliver him to French justice as requested by the widow Anne Mécili. She would have some closing and we would finally know who signed his order. Whereas the secret service chief of the time has been deceased for three years, we would know, today, twenty-two years later, who protects this assassin? But there have been so many crimes and abominations; we wouldn’t know where to start.

Our memory is overwhelmed. So we look away to the faraway lands of violence, sorrow and impunity. We know them better, and speaking of their crimes bears no consequences. We think of the dangerous Kim Jong’s North Korea, the interminable Castro brothers’ Cuba, the bloodthirsty Talibans’ Afghanistan, terrorist colonel Kadhafi’s Libya, El-Bechir the exterminator’s Sudan, sorcerer Than Shwe, general of generals’ Burma, the very hermetic Jintao’s China, KGB’s Vladimir Putin’s Russia, nuclear physicist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, and of the poor Zimbabwe still and always a prey to cholera and Robert Mugabe. Algeria of Mr. Bouteflika is a little like all these all at once: eternity, daily thriller and a lot of oil in the machinery.

But is the problem only Algerian? We cannot not ask the question. Why and in exchange of what did Sarkozy recently declare: “I prefer Bouteflika to the Talibans.” In addition to being president of France and canon of Lateran, would he be also the great godfather in these lords’ Algeria? Why has Jacques Chirac, in 1999 and 2004, rushed to congratulate Bouteflika in an ostentatious way before the counting of the ballots was even completed? Why does official France love our tyrants so much? How come Alexander Adler, who is not the last French analyst, finds Sir Bouteflika so charming?

Adler wrote with much lyricism: “He broke the army and disarmed the Islamists.” Maybe, but doesn’t he know that the problem is not as much the army as it is the secret service. The latter is stronger than ever. It is the maker of kings, generals, and billionaires. It is the puppeteer behind the terror machine. It is the secret service that decides who must live and who must die. Disarmed Islamists? Maybe so, but they are stronger than ever. They are in the government, in the National Assembly; in short they are the ones who run the bazaar. They converted Bouteflika and his brothers, re-conquered the Algerian television, the mosques, the schools, and do what they please with our streets which they ignite with blows of religious discourse and calls to hatred. Bouteflika created a vacuum to make room for his humongous megalomania. The Islamists surreptitiously occupied the space and “inflated his gandoura” as if he were the Mahdi (Messiah).

Jihad is a trick. Islamism knows to wait. The real question is: What will they do when they finally take control? Do Mr. Sarkozy, Chirac and Adler know it? The Bouteflika they support and encourage in his embezzlements is not eternal, considering his age and health. One can even suggest that he is finished. It will thus not be long before we are back to ask them the question that they forgot to raise: And now, what do we do? Another coup, a war, genocide, and an unending exodus and flow of illegal aliens?

For the time being, forced by formalism, he has to run an election campaign. The already-elected-presidential-candidate started it before its time and carries it out like a tired sultan who tours his provinces. He arrives with his police force and its chaouchs (ushers), says three words to the small people, distributes money, heads the local authorities who are loathed by the locals, inaugurates two or three old things that are repainted to look brand new, offers a big couscous to the needy, and sets out again trembling from a fever. The television will do the rest. It is well equipped for the spectacular productions. By 8 pm, during the evening news, he will be Barack Obama squared.

In the race, the already-elected-presidential-candidate has five competitors. We know nothing about them. Perhaps they are film artists and activists, perhaps they are serious people. There is a veteran Trotskist, a radical Islamist, a former customs officer, and a retired former apparatchik. It is all the modernity they could pack together to impress the young generation.

In Algiers, they are referred to as the hares. The heavy weights of the democratic opposition are sitting in the bleachers. They know something about playing the hare. They did it in the presidential elections of 1999 and 2004.

And what about the people in all this? Well, the people did what they have always done. They looked elsewhere. For the terrifying electoral machine of the already-elected-presidential-candidate, they are public enemy number one. Will they finally decide to mobilize for the holy victory of April 9? No matter how much he was being courted, bombarded with comminatory text messages, and reminded the extraordinary challenges he took up and won since the glorious revolution of 1954 and all the good Koranic concoctions, nothing could make a difference. Nauseated, a minister declared: “That whether he [the people] votes or no, our president will be re-elected.”

Boualem Sansal

Boualem Sansal is an Algerian writer, born in 1949. He is an engineer and doctor in economics. He has been a teacher, a company CEO and senior official. In 1999, Gallimard published his first novel, “The Barbarians’ Oath”, which was well received by critiques. In 2003, he was dismissed for his position on Arabization and Islamization. He is the author of many works, including “Harraga” (2006) and “The German’s Village” (2008) both published at Gallimard.

This article appeared in LE MONDE of March 29, 2009