Algeria: Imams Fear Involvement In “Shoring Up Legislative Election Turn-Out”

The Minister of Religious Affairs and Endowments, Mohamed Aissa, has reviewed his decision to separate the mosque from politics and decided to resort to this religious institution on the eve of the upcoming legislative elections to convince the electorate to duly perform its duty on May 4th 2017.

The move came after the frenzied Facebook campaigns over the past few days urging for an election boycott and this campaign seems to have resonated with a large number of Algerian citizens.
In this context, the head of the National Union of Imams Mr. Djaloul Hadjimi warned against the danger that the imam’s speech calling for positive participation in the May 4 elections would be different from his main goal of preserving the security and stability of the country.
The recruitment of the Imams to call on the people to vote in the elections, must be confined within the framework of maintaining the security and stability of the country, and not promoting a candidate or a specific political program.
Mr Hadjimi told “Echorouk” that “participation in the elections is a right … The boycott is a right as well and one shouldn’t ostracize those who refuse to participate in the upcoming polls.”
He went on to say: “The mosque has a sublime message, which is the promotion of good and forbidding evil without politicizing”.
He further asserted that the religious institution had duly praised the role of the ANP army and security services on many occasions and even called for active participation in elections in this context for the sake of preserving and bolstering Algeria’s security and stability.
On the other hand, he said that the statements of Minister Mohamed Issa, fell within the framework of the public interest, although the latter has already warned against the use of the platforms of mosques in the election campaign, especially as he issued a directive to prevent the imams candidates from campaigning within this institution. We refuse to convert the discourse of the mosque into a party speech, whatever it is”, he stressed.
Regarding the Minister of Religious Affairs’ fears that some shadowy quarters might use social media outlets to press the Algerians to boycott the forthcoming legislative elections, our interlocutor underlined that the social networking spaces resemble a global village whose leader is difficult to identify, so one has to be most careful not to be dragged behind these would-be “preachers”, as he put it.