New Leader

A decline of one-man rule

If ever a man embodied Louis XIV's legendary boast, "L 'etat, c 'est moi," it was the late Algerian leader Houari Boumedienne. When he died last December, Boumedienne was not only Algeria's President but also its Minister of Defense, president of the Council of the Revolution and chief of the National Liberation Front (F.L.N.), the country's only political party. Finding a President to succeed such a pervasive figure presented a delicate problem for the eight-man council, many of whose members aspired to the post. In the end, the council settled on a compromise candidate: Colonel Benjedid Chadli, 49, a little-known officer who seems likely to keep Algeria on the track selected by the departed Boumedienne.

Chadli's name will be presented as the sole candidate in a pro forma election on Feb. 7. His nomination settles, for the moment at least, a division within the Revolutionary Council. As Boumedienne lay dying, Colonel Mohammed Salah Yahiaoui began lining up support by asserting that he would be a rigid guardian of Boumedienne's highly centralized, Islamic, socialist policies. Another faction coalesced behind Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a cosmopolitan diplomat who is said to favor strengthening the economy and improving ties with the West.

But when the 3,290 delegates to the F.L.N.'s fourth congress convened in Algiers last week to ratify the council's choice, neither Yahiaoui nor Bouteflika had gained a majority in the Council of the Revolution. The reason: neither man had won the support of the army, which had virtual veto power over the choice. The impasse forced the congress to add another day to its scheduled four, but in the end, Chadli, the military's candidate, prevailed.

Like many names used by veterans of the anticolonial war against France, Chadli's name is a nom de guerre. Algeria's television-wise reporters have another name for him, "Jeff Chandler," after the white-haired and rugged-looking Hollywood actor of the 1950s. Born in a farm village near Annaba on the Mediterranean, he served as a junior officer in the French army until 1954. He then joined the clandestine National Liberation Army, eventually rising to the command of its 13th battalion, based near F.L.N. sanctuaries in Tunisia. After independence, he was picked by Boumedienne to head the important second military district, based in Oran. A devout Muslim whose wife never appears in public without a veil, Chadli has avoided the political limelight. In his ten-minute acceptance speech last week, he vowed that he would be a faithful guardian of the Boumedienne legacy. He declared, "I affirm that socialism is an irreversible option for our country. I pledge myself to fight for the maintenance of our national independence both politically and economically and to maintain the mastery of our national wealth."

Chadli's pledge will mean a continued strain in Algeria's relations with its perennial rival, Morocco. Since Spain ceded control of its former colony of Spanish Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania in 1975, Algeria has been providing arms to the Polisario liberation movement, which seeks to create a new "Saharan Arab Democratic Republic" in the desert area along the Atlantic seaboard. The guerrillas have recently abandoned a unilateral cease-fire they declared last June to launch a "Houari Boumedienne offensive," which they claim has scored several victories.

Domestically, Chadli's biggest problem will be reviving the economy. To cushion the impact of declining oil revenues as Algeria's petroleum reserves are depleted, Boumedienne undertook ambitious industrialization plans. But some sectors of the economy, including housing and agriculture, were sadly neglected and went into decline. Foreign experts believe that the solution lies in an injection of free enterprise and a loosening of bureaucratic controls. But whether Chadli will feel confident enough to take such steps remains to be seen.

Whatever policies emerge under Chadli, the new President is not likely ever to be as powerful as his predecessor. Before selecting Chadli last week, the F.L.N. congress adopted structural reforms that will replace Boumedienne's tightly controlled Council of the Revolution with a more broadly based central committee and a 17-member politburo responsible for policy decisions. At least for the present, the days of one-man rule in Algeria seem to be over.

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