Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie

(RCD)

   This is a secular Berber party born out of the Mouvement Culturel Berbère (MCB) in Algeria. It was founded by a human rights activist and former Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) member, Said Saidi, in February 1989, two weeks after the national referendum on the authorization of a multiparty system. Because of its formation date, many analysts believe that the RCD was midwifed by government authorities to counterbalance the weight of the recently legalized Berber-based party Front des Forces Socialistes. The RCD was formed as a Berber political party, focusing on Berber cultural and linguistic rights as well as broader democratization and human rights issues. The RCD and the FFS formed the Mouvement Culturel Berbère (MCB) as an umbrella organization under which the two parties work on joint action to defend Berber rights. In 1999, the RCD joined the government, becoming the first postindependence Berber-dominated party to participate in a coalition government. While this may appear as a positive step in the direction of integrating the Berber dimension in Algerian politics, the RCD has proved to be infective in pushing forward Berber linguistic and cultural rights. Additionally, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Algerian regime faced the challenges of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS; an Islamist movement) and other Islamic parties that hampered progress on Berber issues.

   Said Saidi took part in the presidential election of November 1995. The RCD condemned the November 1996 constitutional change that privileges "Arab-Islamic values" (Islam as "the state religion" and Arabic as the only official language of the land and a prohibition of political parties founded on religious, linguistic, associative, or regionalist values) and discriminates against Berber language and culture. In contrast to the FSS's reluctant moves in the Algerian political process, the RCD took part in municipal and parliamentary elections and backed the military's eradication of Islamists until April 2001 when the government gendarmes gunned down and murdered demonstrations and innocent bystanders in Kabylia. Since then, however, the party has joined in condemning the actions of the regime. The most recent legislative elections, the first since the military coup of 1992, were held in June 1997. The RCD won 19 seats out of a 380-member National People's Assembly (al majlis al cha`bi al watani).