250 thousand candidates in a rat-race for local elections in Algeria

The campaign trail for the election of new mayors and governors in Algeria will start tomorrow amid a complete indifference among the public opinion and a quasi- absence of a political activity.

• Some 250 thousand candidates in addition to parties’ leaders will hit the streets and compounds a desperate move to attract the electors.
• Except the media uproar triggered by the interior ministry with the release of a series of figures and pseudo- communiqués from the National Committee for the Supervision of the Elections, the activities in the parties’ headquarters is quasi –nil.
• Many blame the regime as well as the political parties for this general disinterest, although the authorities have tried to forward some guarantees in comparison to the last legislative elections, through the appointment of a technocrat at the head of the government in the person of Abdelmalek Sellal.
• The political parties have a also a part in this political masquerade and proved once again that they didn’t reach the required maturity that allows them to pull the masses around a sound social and political project.
• Figures released by the interior ministry have shown that many parties have failed even to sway their own militants to vote. Among 52 parties in the race for the elections, 36 didn’t reach the threshold of 100 lists countrywide, while 25 didn’t succeed to present their candidates in 50 municipalities only.
• Driven by narrow personal ambitions, some parties including the Islamic ones have sealed “unnatural” alliances with their political foes, for in stance, the Movement for Society of Peace and Enahdha joined their forces to the National Democratic Rally.
• Many consider these alliances illogical and part of the political hypocrisy from pseudo politicians whose sole and unique objective is to serve their own interests and not that one of the community.