Algeria: “Islamists without any candidate for 2014 presidential polls”

Since the advent of multi-party democracy in Algeria in 1989, the Islamist parties have taken part in all of the country’s elections but this time they seem loath or unable to file a consensual candidate in charge of representing the Islamist opposition trend in the forthcoming presidential polls slated for April 17th 2014.

Since the 1995 presidential elections, the Islamist parties including the MSP, Ennahda and other candidates close to this trend have filed their candidacies for the presidential elections but they didn’t fare well by dismally failing to carry the day in the final vote-tally.

Since 1999, until the year 2009, all the presidential elections saw a routing of the Islamist candidates in the election returns which gave a very large victory to Abdellaziz Bouteflika who is now prodded by several parties close to the establishment and mass organizations to seek a fourth consecutive mandate despite his frail health condition due to a stroke early last year.

Most of the Islamist parties including the MSP have of late preferred to boycott the 2014 presidential elections by blaming the current authorities of a biased and logjam attitude with regard to the polls.

They argued that this much restrictive attitude by the public authorities was blatantly aimed at ensuring the reelection of incumbent President Bouteflika, through thick and thin, during next April’s ballot regardless of the citizens’ genuine expectations and aspirations for a salutary change at all levels, as they put it.