Abdelkader Bensalah steps down from RND party’s top rostrum

Mr Abdelkader Bensalah resigned from the Presidency of the RND, onThursday, May 28th, “Echorouk” has learnt from several members of the national Secretariat of the party. The forced departure of the Chairman of the Council of the Nation (Senate) was predictable because of the acute crisis now besetting the RND party.

This resignation paves the way for the expected return of Ahmed Ouyahia as head of the RND. The current principal private secretary of president Bouteflika had left the leadership of the RND party in January 2013, under heavy pressure from a “re-adjustment” movement.

The vehement opponents of the speaker of the council of the nation or Senate, seemed resolute in their standing claim to oust Bensalah from the RND top rostrum. 

A sizable number of the members of the national Council, MPs and senators 

already made their decision meaning that Bensalah must go sooner than later.

According to well informed sources, 304 out of the 360 members of the national Council, as well as “all MPs” and “the majority of the members of the Council of the Nation” recently signed a petition urging Bensalah to file his resignation from the head of the RND party. 

They sternly criticized Abdelkader Bensalah for what they called “taking hostage” the RND party since the departure of Ahmed Ouyahia. 

“In addition to his disastrous management, he was unable to have correct relations with the executives and militants  of the party”. 

“He has unabatedly continued to humiliate and to demean people, to the point that no one wants to work with him any longer”. 

“Abdelkader Bensalah has been left in the lurch for his misbehavior”, the same sources added.

The latter acknowledged in a statement to the press earlier this week that an “abnormal atmosphere is now holding sway within the RND party, without elaborating”.