Algeria Parliament approves PM plan of action amid critics

Algerian Parliament Thursday adopted the plan of action submitted by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia while the Workers’ party said the “plan does not reflect reality.”

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• Parliament’s members debated the plan of action for four days. Nearly 200 of them asked questions and raised remarks to Ouyahia who had to answer them.  
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• Ouyahia said the government is working on another five-year-plan program of development worth $100 billion to $150 billion.
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• Many projects will be delivered in the end of March 2009 including 120 high schools, 305 junior high schools, 320 primary schools, 644 dining halls, 7 hospitals and 112 urban transport enterprises, he said.
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• Other projects will be achieved within the next few years such as new routes, railways and new water dams.
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• Speaking on Algeria East-West railway project, Ouyahia said progress will be made by 80 percent.
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• “Contrarily to what certain people say, the achievement of the project will not be delayed,” he added.
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• Ouyahia said the government is committed to make sure that Algeria’s spring presidential elections will take place within “democracy, pluralism and transparency.”
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• He said Algeria can afford to mobilize 600,000 agents to supervise the election organization.
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• On the other hand, the leader of the Workers’ party, Louisa Hanoune criticized the government’s plan, saying it “did not carry out solutions for raised problems.”  But it was no more than an “assessment of the presidential mandate.”
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• “The assessment of the presidential mandate is part of the president’s prerogatives and not the prime minister’s because we are not in a parliamentary system,” she said in a meeting of the party held in Algiers on Friday.
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• Hanoune criticized the figures given by Ouyahia, describing them as “provocative” because they do not reflect reality.
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• She believes the government’s plan neglected important issues including illegal immigration and privatization.
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• “Because of that, we boycotted the vote,” she said.