Algeria Opposition: “How will the Constitutional Council deal with Bouteflika’s arguable candidacy file?”

The national public opinion as well as the boycotting opposition parties and the now disillusioned candidates for next April’s presidential elections in Algeria are wondering how the constitutional council will deal with the debatable “candidacy file” of incumbent Abdellaziz Bouteflika who is seeking a fourth straight term in office after an uninterrupted 15 – year long period in power.

They have asked striking questions about the constitutional council’s expected position regarding the re-election bid of Bouteflika arguing that the latter is clearly not fit physically to govern after the debilitating stroke he suffered early last year.

Among the opposition’s questions stand one related directly to Bouteflika’s overt frail health condition.

How the constitutional council, which has the prerogative to validate or to turn down the candidates’ submitted files, will deal with Bouteflika’s  questionable health track record, a certified document that should be included by virtue of the law in the relevant election – related file?

Another lingering question which is on every lip: will the constitutional council take into account the obfuscated incapacitating illness now besetting the incumbent President?

And will the constitutional council’s chairman Mourad Medelci duly respect article 23 of the rules of procedures of the constitutional body?

In this connection, Mohamed Hadibi, the spokesman of the opposition Annahda movement, which announced earlier this week its decision to boycott the next presidential polls along with other opposition parties, told Echorouk that the composition of the decision – making constitutional council had been tailor – made specifically by the ruling political establishment for the sole purpose of next April’s presidential polls with on focus a projected re-election bid by incumbent Bouteflika.

He also argued that the nomination of Mourad Medelci, a close ally of Bouteflika, at the head of the constitutional council was also geared to settling the nagging health issue facing ailing Bouteflika and removing all hurdles for his smooth and uncontested re-election for a fourth consecutive mandate at the helm of the nation despite the opposition’s outcry and bitter expostulations.