After promising constitutional reform in the wake of the Arab Spring, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika put forward draft constitutional articles last week aimed at bolstering the country’s democratic institutions.

On face value, the changes seem promising: a two-term limit for the presidency, requiring parliamentary approval for the president’s selection of a Prime Minister, and reducing the length of time in which the president can legislate during parliamentary holidays from four months to two months. Yet many argue the reforms serve less to advance democratic progress than to quell the unrest that Algeria’s ongoing anti-democratic rule foments. Since its independence from the French, the country has been dominated by strong executive and military rule, tempering optimism about democratic reform.

Term limits, for instance, were suspended by President Bouteflika in 2008 in an attempt to build “durable institutions.” Since then, Bouteflika has been reelected twice, now serving his fourth term. The reinstatement of term limits strikes many as hypocritical, an indication less of genuine change and more of a conditional abrogation of democracy.

The changes to presidential powers are also indicative. The president now must obtain parliamentary approval to appoint a prime minister. The period in which the president can use executive power to legislate during the parliamentary holiday is also reduced, from four months to two months. But many argue parliamentary approval is an inadequate check to the president’s authority. Since the 1960s, Algeria’s presidential and parliamentary elections have been dominated by the National Liberation Front (FLN), the country’s primary political party. With the FLN controlling both houses of parliament, some believe parliamentary approval serves as nothing more than a rubber stamp to Bouteflika’s policies. The parliament’s near-unanimous decision to abolish presidential term limits in 2008 seems to substantiate those claims.

This calls into question the legitimacy of using the parliamentary process to approve the new reforms. President Bouteflika has historically relied upon parliamentary approval instead of a national referendum to pass controversial measures, such as his 2006 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, widely criticized for granting amnesty to security forces suspected of human rights abuses in the Algerian Civil War.

If there is one saving grace of the constitution it is its recognition of Tamazight, the language of Algeria’s Amazigh population, as an official language. Founded as an explicitly Arab country, the post-colonial Algerian state routinely marginalized the Amazigh, placing restrictions on what they could name their children as well as which and how many hours they could broadcast in their native tongue on national radio. Though Tamazight became a national language in 2002, its new status as an official language would meet longstanding demands of minority parties, establish a national language academy to teach Tamazight, and could serve as a point of unity between Algerian opposition parties. But until such parties gain enough power to rival the FLN, Bouteflika and his party’s incentive to maintain power will continue to clash with their stated goal of democratic development.