The launch of the electoral campaign in Algeria was given Sunday, November 17th. It will last until December 12, the date of the election. And this despite the popular demonstrations to demand the end of the electoral process and the departure of the entire team in place. The Hirak, the unprecedented protest movement that appeared on February 22, does not seem to have managed to bend the power that keeps its course.
An ethics charter
On Saturday, the five successful candidates, including former Prime Ministers Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Ali Benflis and Abdelmajid Tebboune, the seventies who serve as favorites, signed in Algiers a charter of ethics of electoral practices, according to images broadcast by a private channel on the eve of the launch of the campaign
This charter elaborated by the National Independent Electoral Authority (ANIE) "sets out the guiding principles and particular practices that form the framework for the expected moral behavior of the actors and persons participating in the electoral process". This is the first time that candidates for election in the country sign such a charter.
In turn, the five candidates, all of whom took part in the 20-year presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika or supported him, signed the charter and took the floor. The signatories undertake to "refrain from any defamatory, insulting, invective to another candidate or actor of the electoral process and any other statement that they know to be wrong".
The day before, the Algerians went out on the streets to say no to the vote intended, according to them, to recycle the system in place. The Hirak does not weaken. After having obtained in April the departure of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the movement had rejected the presidential election of July 4 which did not take place for lack of candidates.
General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, strongman of the country since the resignation of President Bouteflika, and the high military command have refused for months any way out of crisis that a presidential and reject the establishment of transitional institutions called for by the protesters.
Electoral panels were covered with slogans hostile to the vote, even before the posters of the candidates were displayed, according to images published on social networks.
With AFP