Sadek Hadjerès (13 September 1928 – 3 November 2022) was an Algerian politician of the Algerian Communist Party.
Biography
Hadjeres went to primary school in Berrouaghia and Larba, and secondary school in Médéa, Blida and Ben Aknoun. During this time he became a medium-level leader of the Algerian Muslim Scouts (Scouts Musulmans Algériens) in the Mitidja from 1943 to 1946 and then a militant of the Algerian People's Party (PPA) in 1944.
From 1946 to 1953 he was a medicine student at the University of Algiers. In 1948 he became the leader of the university section of the Party of the Algerian People, a nationalist party which was arguing for independence from France. In 1949 he was one of the co-authors of the party's platform document 'L'Algerie libre vivra' (Free Algeria will live).
After the so-called Berber crisis of 1949 within the PPA party, Hadjerès left having been involved in the crisis. He himself refused the term 'Berber' for this crisis on several occasions including in 2007 in an interview for the Soir d'Algérie daily newspaper.
After being a member for several years since his youth of the AEMAN, in 1950 he became the president of the AEMAN (Association des étudiants musulmans de l'Afrique du Nord), which was the first political organisation created in North Africa. The AEMAN was created in Algiers in 1912 by Emir Khaled, the grandson of Emir Abdelkader.
In 1951 Sadek Hadjerès joined the Algerian Communist Party (Parti Communiste Algérien). He became a member of the Party Council (Conseil Consultatif) in 1952. In 1953 and 1954 he was the director of the magazine 'Progrès' (Progress) and became the General Advisor of the Party for the El Harrach and Mitidja East regions. That year, the Algerian War had begun on 1 November. In 1955 he became a member of the Political Bureau of the Algerian Communist Party and in December his support for the independence struggle was forced underground. He was condemned in absentia to hard labour by a French court, and became national co-director of the armed organisation 'Combattants of the Liberation', which was the Algerian Communist Party's armed wing and was cooperating with the much larger nationalist guerilla force: the National Liberation Front, but without being a part of it.
With his fellow communist friend Bachir Hadj Ali he negotiated in April, June, and July 1956 with the representatives of the National Liberation Front (Benyoucef Ben Khedda and Abane Ramdane) regarding the integration of the Communist troops into the FLN forces. He continued to fight within the PCA (Algerian communist party) throughout the war, until independence.
After independence in July 1962, he became a member of the Secretariat of the Algerian Communist Party. In October 1962, the new president Ahmed Ben Bella banned the Communist Party which went underground. Sadek Hadjeres then became the coordinator of the Communist Party. During the Socialist Charter of Algiers of 1964 he attempted to advance the ideas of the party. From 1963 to 1965 he was a medical practitioner and medical sciences researcher.
After the coup of Boumediène which ousted Ben Bella from power in 1965, he continued to operate clandestinely for the next 24 years. He was a member of the ORP (Organisation of Popular Resistance) during some of that time at the beginning, and a founding member in 1966 of the PAGS party (Parti de l'Avant Garde Socialiste) which was a new facade for the Communist Party. The Organisation of Popular Resistance had been created by Mohamed Harbi and Hocine Zahouane, two left-wing leaders of the FLN to oppose Boumedienne's coup. Hadjeres joined the ORP while other communist leaders such as Henri Alleg and Larbi Bouhali went into exile. With the leaders exiled, the ORP was weakened and the PAGS party was created the following year.
In the early 70s, Boumediène undertook several leftist projects such as the Agrarian Revolution, the nationalisation of lands and factories, and other such socialist projects. President Boumediène also made Algeria closer to the Eastern bloc of the USSR and all these steps pleased indirectly Sadek Hadjeres' PAGS party which found a favourable political terrain to advance its ideas, while still remaining an opposition closely watched by the government and excluded from all official activities and subject to repression like all other opposition parties.
In 1976 during the debate on the national Charter, Hadjeres led the underground PAGS briefly out of clandestinity by expressing loudly its views via student organisations such as the UNJA. This was the zenith of the communist party's political activities and influence on state affairs in Algeria according to many political commentators.
