Mohamed Boudiaf, arrested June 21 on the charge of plotting against the Algerian government, was released November 16,
Boudiaf is considered ane of the "historical" leaders of the Algerian Revolution. He shared captivity with Ben Bella and others who were kid~ napped by French imperialist forces in October 1956 from a Moroccan plane, They were held in prison until the Evian cease-fire agreement was signed last year,
When Boudiaf was placed under arrest last June, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, among other forces, took the position that he should be either given a public trial, if evidence existed to substantiate the charges levelled against him, or he. should be released.
_ Upon being freed in Algiers, Boudiaf held a press conference in which he pledged continued political opposition against the Ben Bella regime, His criticisms of Ben Bellats course followed the general pattern of those made by Ait Ahmedts "Front of Socialist Forces," the right-wing opposition which recently sought to mount an armed rebellion based in the Kabylie region, :
Boudiaf was reported by the Paris. daily Le Monde [November 19] as charging Ben Bella with attempting to build "a hasty and precipitate socialism," He denied that a class struggle existed in Algeria because ‘there are no structured social classes in Algeria," .
This appears to echo Ait Ahmed'ts denunciations of Ben Bellats "hasty and exaggerated nationalizations,"
Along with Boudiaf, other prominent political prisoners were released in Algeria, among them former Wilaya II commander Col, Saout El Arab.
There hag been considerable speculation over the possible significance of these releases as well as the negotiations between Ben Bella and such opposition leaders as Ait Ahmed (who was permitted to come into Algiers for the conversations without any embarrassing questions being asked about his appeals for the armed overthrow of the government), Belkacem Krim and Ferhat Abbas (who also returned to Algiers), and former general secretary of the FLN [Front de Liberation Nationale] Mohamed Khider, who still retains his post as member of the Political Bureau,
The speculation centers on the possibility that Ben Bella might have made an agreement with the "Kabyle Opposition," not only to free the political prisoners but also to create a commission to prepare for the coming rLil congress in which all tendencies would be represented. This would signify a shift. to the right,
Imperialist circles have expressed the hope that such an agreement
might signal a halt at last to the continual evolution of the Ben Bella government toward the left. The November 18 New York Times noted the view among Western observers that the liberation of Boudiaf was a move by Ben Bella intended to placate opposition demands that he foster a more "“moderate" political climate, thus countering the charge that he is a "dictator,"
.. However, such speculations were cut short when President Ben Bella, speaking in the Algerian National Assembly, stressed that Algeria was: not giving up its "socialist. option."
As for the conferences and discussions of recent days, he alluded to these by saying that he stood for the free and clear expression of all socialist and revolutionary points of view at the coming FLN congress, Nonsocialist opinions, however, would not be tolerated at the congress,
‘It is significant that none of the "moderate"; i.e., right-wing tendency leaders were named to the preparatory commission of FIN cadres, Prominently missing from the list of those charged with organizing the next -FLN congress are the names of Ferhat Abbas, Mohamed Khider, Ait Ahmed, .Belkacem Krim, Bentobbal, Boussouf, and other prominent former FLN leaders who consider Ben Bellats course to be "precipitate socialism,”
On tne other hand the list includes some cadres known to be close to the "Kabyle opposition" but who never identified themselves with Ait Ahmed's political views, A prominent one is Bel Hocine Mabrouk, the Tizi Ouzou member of parliament. . Other names of interest on the list include Salah Louanchi, the most pronounced left-winger of the FLN cadres, and Mohamed Harbi, the editor of the weekly Révolution Africaine,
According to an article published in Révolution Africaine, three tendencies can be distinguished among the FLN cadres: one favoring state capitalism, another standing for a socialism that is vague and ill-defined and a third that is militantly Marxist,