Ferhat Abbas

Ferhat Abbas (born Aug. 24, 1899, Chahna, near Constantine, Alg.—died Dec. 24, 1985, Algiers) was a politician and leader of the national independence movement who served as the first president of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic.

Son of a Muslim official in the Algerian civil service, Abbas received an entirely French education at Philippeville (now Skikda) and Constantine and at the University of Algiers. After two years’ service with the French Army, he became a pharmacist at Sétif and was elected first to the municipal council of Sétif and then to the general council in Constantine. Early in his political career, he advocated collaboration with the French, the assimilation of the “native element in French society,” and the abolition of colonialism to bring about the emancipation of the Algerian Muslims as French citizens. Disillusioned by the French in 1938, he organized the Union Populaire Algérienne, which proposed equal rights for French and Algerians while preserving the Algerian culture and language. Nevertheless, at the outbreak of World War II, Abbas enlisted in the medical corps of the French Army.

On Feb. 10, 1943, the “Manifesto of the Algerian People,” prepared by Abbas, was proclaimed. It was subsequently presented to the French and the Allied authorities in North Africa. The manifesto, which reflected a fundamental change in its author’s political position, not only condemned French colonial rule but also called for the application of the principle of self-determination and demanded an Algerian constitution granting equality to all inhabitants of Algeria. In May, Abbas, along with a number of his colleagues, wrote an addendum to the manifesto, which envisioned a sovereign Algerian nation. It was presented to the French on June 26. On its rejection by the French governor general, Ferhat Abbas and an Algerian working-class leader, Messali Hadj, formed the Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté (AML; Friends of the Manifesto and Liberty), which envisioned an Algerian autonomous republic federated to a renewed, anti-colonial France. After the suppression of the AML and a year’s imprisonment, in 1946 he founded the Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA; Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto), which advocated cooperation with France in the formation of the Algerian state. Abbas’ moderate and conciliatory attempts failed to evoke a sympathetic response from the French colonial officials, however, and in 1956 he escaped to Cairo to join the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), an Algerian organization committed to revolutionary struggle for independence from France.

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On Sept. 18, 1958, the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic was formed with Ferhat Abbas as president. He resigned in 1961 but was elected president of the Algerian Constituent Assembly in 1962, when Algeria gained independence. Despite his political alliance with the revolutionary and Socialist FLN, he remained an exponent of parliamentary institutions and constitutionalism. To protest the drafting of the Algerian constitution by the FLN outside the Constituent Assembly, he resigned his post as the assembly’s president in August 1963 and was expelled from the FLN. An opponent of the then-president, Ahmed Ben Bella, he was placed under house arrest in 1964 but was released the following year.

Ferhat Abbas described the Algerian War of Independence in La Nuit coloniale (1962; “The Colonial Night”). He is also the author of Le Jeune Algérien: de la colonie vers la province (1931; “The Young Algerian: From Colony to Province”) and Autopsie d’une guerre (1980; “Autopsy of a War”).