Algeria .. Independent commission to organize elections and prominent dissent jailed

On Thursday evening, the National People's Assembly (lower house of the Algerian parliament) voted overwhelmingly on a draft law establishing a supreme electoral commission for the first time in the country's history, along with amendments to the election law in preparation for the presidential ballot before the end of the year. Army".

This came in a public session chaired by the President of the Council Suleiman Shannin, in the presence of Minister of Justice Belkacem Zgmati.

The "Independent National Electoral Authority" bill, which is being introduced for the first time in the country's history, has been approved and will oversee, organize and monitor the elections instead of the government, represented by the Interior Ministry.

The amendments to the electoral law concern the requirement of a university degree for the first time on the candidate for the presidential elections, in addition to assigning the task of studying the candidacy files to the Independent Electoral Authority instead of the Constitutional Court.

According to Shannin, who presented the two projects to the vote, they were approved by a majority of the members of the body present (251 deputies out of 462 members of the Council), although several parliamentary blocs have boycotted the legislature for months in support of the popular movement.

Article 142 has been amended to include reducing the number of subscription forms for individual signatures to be submitted with the nomination file to fifty thousand signatures instead of sixty thousand.

Most of these amendments were contained in a report of the Mediation and Dialogue Commission, which I submitted a few days ago to President Abdelkader Bensalah, after weeks of consultations with the political class.

The National Assembly (the second chamber of parliament) will start Friday to discuss and vote on the two projects before they enter into force after being approved by the Constitutional Council as a last stop.

On the other hand, the investigative judge at the Court of the Kulaya (about 26 km west of Algiers) on Thursday to put political activist Karim Tabou in provisional detention for "weakening the morale of the army."

According to the Algerian daily El Khabar, lawyer Abdelghani Badi said that his client was detained after hearing his statements and charged with weakening the morale of the members of the National People's Army.