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Algerian
Elections Begin Amidst Amazigh Boycott
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A
young Amazigh protester |
With
additional reporting by Alya See Ahmad & Mohamad Musadaq Youssefi,
IOL Algeria correspondents
ALGIERS,
May 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The main Algerian
opposition parties as well as the Amazigh population have decided to
boycott the country’s general elections which start Thursday, May
30, describing them as lacking credibility and stressing that there
will be fraud.
The
voting population includes 18 million citizens who have the right to
vote and choose the 389 members of the National People’s Assembly.
There are 10,052 contestants from the 23 political parties competing
for the chairs.
The
two main Algerian opposition parties, the Socialist Power, and the
Unity for Acculturation and Democracy parties have announced that they
will boycott the elections and described them as an attempt by the
government to regain its democratic image.
In
press statements on Thursday, the two parties, both of them popular in
the tribal area, slammed what they described as the government’s
manipulation of the election result.
They
said that the elections have lost its credibility and that Amazigh
activists have promised to ruin it in the tribal area, as they have
announced a general five-day strike starting from Tuesday, May 28, in
the mountainous area which has witnessed anti-government protests for
the last year. These protests addressed issues concerned with
language, security and economy. Nearly five million of the 31 million
Algerian population live in that area.
The
strike included most of the banks and stores in the city of Tizi
Ouzou. One of the protesters told news agencies at one of the
blockades constructed by the protesters: “We are going to make sure
that no one votes there. We are not going to allow the police to enter
our areas.”
Similar
blockades were made in all areas of Tizi Ouzou, one of the largest
cities in the tribal area which lies nearly 90 kilometers away from
the capital, Algiers.
IslamOnline’s
correspondent visited Tizi Ouzou Wednesday night, May 29, and noted
that the security forces camp, on the main road in the center of the
city, had been closed for months, because of the residents’
rejection of the presence of these forces.
The
residents of the city express great anger at the Arabic language,
which they feel is representative of authority. This anger is featured
in the direction boards on the street which have their Arabic names
scratched out and only the French and Amazigh names left in. The
university of Mawlawi Mohammad have kept its name in both these
languages and not in Arabic.
The
tribes - famous for their struggle against French occupation - feel
that the time has come for reform in Algeria, but the 23 political
parties that are taking part in the elections say that reform takes
place through the voting boxes and not away from it.
Ahmad
Jadai, the spokesperson of the Socialist Power party said that the
party refuses to take part in the elections because the current
establishments are in power through fraud and that the coming
elections will also be manipulated.
Sheikh
Ali Belhaj, the number two man in the Islamic Salvation Front accused
the Algerian government of preparing to manipulate the elections.
Belhaj,
who has been under arrest since May 25, said in a statement sent to
IslamOnline that the elections will not cause any changes “in the
light of the sick and rotten justice”, referring to the statement of
Algerian president Abdul Aziz Bouteflika who said that Justice could
not be improved before 30 years.
Belhaj
said that fraud is inevitable and that there are many ways to do that,
such as alienating a personality which the people want or discrediting
a specific party.
The
current ruling coalition comprises the National Democratic Rally
(RND), founded in 1997 under then-president Liamine Zeroual; the FLN,
and the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), an Islamic party.
Most
observers and a large section of the press expect the same forces to
dominate the next parliament, a prediction supported by a voter survey
carried out by the Algerian daily newspaper, El-Watan, which found 70
percent of respondents planning to vote for one of the three parties,
reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Campaign
rallies have attracted mediocre crowds, some even cancelled for lack
of interest.
These
are the second elections to be held in Algeria since the major crisis
which the country went through in 1992, after the Algerian
authorities, supported by the army, cancelled the elections that was
held that year after its initial results showed that the Islamic
Rescue party was winning.
This
was followed by violence between the authority and some Islamic armed
parties which resulted in the death of 100 thousand Algerian,
according to the Algerian authorities.
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