Algeria’s government has published two significant draft constitutional reforms that seem intended to send out a message to critics of the country’s commitment to democracy.

Last Monday the Algerian presidency published plans to restrict serving presidents to two terms of office; it also wants to make Amazigh, spoken by the country’s indigenous Berber minority, an official language.

The government said the plans were intended to round off a series of reforms announced in 2011, following the Arab spring. The restrictions on the presidency will cancel out a change made in 2008 that enabled Algeria’s long-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to stand for a third term. Bouteflika won a fourth term of office in 2014, amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud.

Amazigh was granted “national language” status in 2002 and its recognition rewards the efforts of a long campaign hinging on the definition of Algeria’s national identity. In 1949 the issue triggered a serious crisis in the Algerian independence movement. The controversy was papered over when the war of independence started shortly afterwards, but resurfaced when independence was proclaimed in 1962. Hocine Aït Ahmed, one of the original leaders of the independence movement, advocated a democratic state guaranteeing political pluralism. But his ideas were soon thwarted by the authoritarian Pan-Arab credo that prevailed under presidents Ahmed Ben Bella (1963-65) and Houari Boumédiène (1965-1976).

The campaign in favour of the Amazigh language dovetailed naturally with the broader struggle for civil liberties, gaining fresh impetus in the 1980s with the Berber cultural movement. In the early 1990s the authorities grudgingly started to acknowledge its importance. “It took almost half a century, starting from the crisis in 1949, for the Algerian constitution [of 1996] to begin to draw up a more balanced, realistic map of the nation’s identity, though there is still a great deal of ambiguity,” the nationalist militant, then leader of the Algerian Communist party, Sadek Hadjeres, wrote in 1998.

The plans for constitutional reform include setting up an Algerian Academy of Berber Language, tasked with consolidating its new status as an official tongue. Supporters say it would put an end to a pointless source of division, giving rise to various political ills the country could well do without.

Some opposition parties have voiced doubts about the reform, but the overall feeling is any form of progress is worth having.

Although there is a consensus on Amazigh, the move to restrict presidential powers was greeted with cynicism. The new article in the constitution would only allow the incumbent to be re-elected once and rules out any further changes to the rules.

Explaining the reform, Ahmed Ouyahia, the former Algerian prime minister and now Bouteflika’s principal private secretary, claimed that the previous extension, in 2008, had come in response to “demands from civil society”. Bouteflika’s candidacy in 2009, and again in 2014, had, he asserted, represented a “sacrifice” on the president’s part.

The reform will also enlarge parliament’s powers and set up an independent body to supervise elections, headed by a non-aligned public figure. But the opposition is unconvinced.

Ali Benflis, a former prime minister who twice stood against Bouteflika in elections, condemned the constitutional changes as a ploy “simply to buy time and stay in power”.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde