Algerian diplomacy on damage control mission after BRICS debacle

Algeria’s foreign minister Ahmed Attaf is on a damage control mission after BRICS rejected his country’s bid, exposing the false promises of President Tebboune who arrogantly promised his people an imminent admission to the group of the world’s fastly growing economies.

Tebboune made of joining BRICS a certainty for his people, repeating since 2022 that Algeria will integrate the group.

He said Algeria would join BRICS in 2023, before backtracking to say it would join at first as an “observer”. But none of that happened, while two other African countries with a more diversified economies, Ethiopia and Egypt, joined the BRICS, together with Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE and Argentina.

Unable to explain the BRICS debacle, Tebboune- usually very talkative to state mouthpiece media- has not explained nor apologized to his people after this resounding diplomatic failure.

Of all the countries that asked to join the BRICS, Algeria and its president were the most active going as far as visiting China and Russia to literally beg for membership.

Tebboune was seen in Russia courting Putting and asking him for support to join BRICS, while playing on the chord of anti-western sentiment and urging the end of the dollar domination. During his visit to Beijing, he said Algeria represents to Africa what Beijing represents to the world.

The Algerian people are in shock after Tebboune made many of the uninformed public opinion believe that Algeria would certainly join the group. Failure to join the BRICS generated a wave of resentment at public officials and questioning of their policies.

In the first appearance following the BRICS saga, Attaf said that Algeria would continue its shift to Asia and Central Asia because that is “where the future lies”!

While downplaying the BRICS decision not to include Algeria, Attaf continued to mock Algerians by shunning to explain the genuine reasons behind the exclusion of Algeria, which are to be found in its weak economy, sluggish growth, and erratic foreign policy.

As explained by Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov, the main new membership criteria were “the weight, prominence and importance of the candidates and their international standing.” All primary factors for the group that obviously Algeria failed to meet.