Algeria's east bloc remnant claims to be "God's party"

JUST when Algerians thought it was safe to forget the one party system - the mass organisations and central committees, the congresses condemning deviationism, the purges - they're back.

The National Liberation Front (FLN), the victor of the war against the French that became a reliquary of east bloc socialism, has been resurrected.

Algerian opposition newspapers point out the physical resemblance between Boualem Benhamouda, the FLN's new secretary general, and the Polish communist General Jaruzelski. His dark glasses and unsmiling face remind Algerians of the man who tried to crush Solidarity.

Since taking over the party last January, Benhamouda - an apparatchik for a quarter of a century after independence in 1962 - has relaunched the strident nationalist rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s.

His number two, Abdul Rahman Belayat - the real engineer of the January internal party coup - had been relegated to the shelves of history for nearly a decade. More voluble than the tight lipped Benahmouda, Belayat loves to go on government television to excoriate everyone who opposes the government as "the real enemies of Algeria". The FLN, he told viewers before last month's constitutional referendum, is God's party.

Algerians say the FLN is not God's party but the party of the famous "TBS, triangle". TBS stands for Tebessa, Batna and Skikda, the main cities in the east of the country. Since the independence war, most of the military and FLN party leaders have come from this region.

In times of crisis, there is always a temptation to revert to old ways. Two months after the November 1995 presidential election, followers of President Zeroual organised a central committee meeting in the course of which they unseated the reforming secretary general, Abdel Hamid Mehri. Mehri, whose daughter is married to the son of former President Chadli Benjedid - himself overthrown by the army in 1992 - had tried to turn the FLN into a real political party. At the 1989 congress, military officers agreed to leave the central committee.

The reforming - losing - branch of the FLN is led by Mehri and former prime minister Mouloud Hamrouche, who was appointed by Chadli after the October 1988 riots to lead Algeria to multi party democracy.

Hamrouche recognised the now outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and prepared the disastrous 1991 legislative elections. In the first round, before the army annulled the results, the FIS won nearly 200 parliamentary seats. To the party's shock and amazement, the FLN didn't win any seats. "There was a wall around Chadli," says a former party hack. "They were blind to reality. Anyone who tried to tell them they were going to lose was distrusted and shoved aside."

For old party hands, Mehri's support for the 1995 "Rome Platform", a peace plan concluded with the support of the banned FIS, was the last straw. Mehri and Hamrouche signed last month's "Peace Appeal", which led to further denunciations by FLN hardliners. Now the FLN is preparing for next year's legislative elections. Zeroual is counting on the party and its satellites to give him a majority in the parliament.

Westerners often make compare the FLN to east bloc communist parties, Dr Ahmed Djeddai of the opposition Front of Socialist Forces said. "We are more like South America," he added. "In east bloc countries, there was one party and the army was at the orders of the party. Here - like in Latin America - the army was in power and the party was used by the army. Like Latin America, the "military resisted the transition to democracy, and that led to violence. The military's failed coup in Russia succeeded here."