Background
Belaid ABDESSELAM was born in Dehemcha, near Sétif, Algeria on 20 July 1928. He was the Minister of the different sectors and an outstanding politician stands for independence of Algeria.
Belaid ABDESSELAM was born in Dehemcha, near Sétif, Algeria on 20 July 1928. He was the Minister of the different sectors and an outstanding politician stands for independence of Algeria.
Educated at local schools.Then he began medical studies at Algiers and then was awarded a French scholarship to the University of Grenoble. After becoming absorbed in the activities of the General Union of Algerian Moslem Students (UGEMA) he abandoned his studies for full-time partisan work.
Ardent nationalist sent to prison by the French at the age of 17.
His underground work for the liberation movement led to a sentence of four -years’ imprisonment in 1945 but a year later he was released. He rose during the liberation movement to be political adviser to Ben Khedda, the leader of the provisional government who came to terms with the French at Evian in March 1962 for independence.
He became an instructor at the National Liberation Front (FLN) school at Oujda in Morocco. Ben Khedda picked him as his political adviser and brought him to the Tunis headquarters. He was made delegate for economic affairs in the provisional government.
After independence he was appointed president and director-general of the giant SONATRACH state enterprise running the country’s oil and gas wealth. He took on the French as a tough negotiator for the first agreement in 1965. Following the coup in June 1965 he was appointed to President Boumedienne’s first cabinet as Minister of Industry and Energy but stayed in charge of SONATRACH until Sidahmed Ghozali took over in April 1966.
His experience as head of SONATRACH made him eager to maintain overall responsibility as Minister for all state enterprises because he felt that only this way could ensure a proper distribution of priorities among competing pressure groups. Cherif Belkacem as Minister of Finance and the National Plan at the time took this as a personal challenge. He exercised his seniority in the inner circle of the Oujda Group from the liberation struggle days to make Abdesselam surrender on this point.
Although briefly absent from the Ministry at the beginning of 1970 following the showdown he found his position was strengthened when Belkacem lost his responsibility for Finance and the National Plan in the big reshuffle of July 21, 1970.
Solid, hardworking administrator with a clean shaven look. Not a man with flair or a political heavyweight, he still plays an important part in seeing that government, priorities are realistic in the main sector of the country’s wealth-gas, oil, phosphates and steel.