Algeria Parliament gives President third term

Algeria’s Parliament Wednesday adopted a draft bill to amend the constitution proposed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The new constitution allows him run for a third term in spring presidential elections.

• Adopted by the absolute majority of Parliament’s members, the new constitution limits the prerogatives of the prime minister and gives more political rights to women.
• Bouteflika, reaching the end of his second and final term changed article 74 related to office mandate to put no limit for a president to be re-elected.
• He said the amendment would “allow people to exercise their legitimate right to choose those who govern them and renew their confidence in them in all sovereignty.”
• Opposition in Algeria says Bouteflika uses the constitutional amendment as a trick to stay in power while his allies believe his initiative would promote freedoms and democracy in the country.
• The Algerian Parliament which consists in 2 chamber counts 389 members in the Council of the Nation (Upper Chamber) and 144 in the People’s National Assembly (Lower Chamber).
• A total of 48 members of the Council of the Nation are appointed by the president.
• With 249 members, the Presidential Alliance represented in the National Liberation Front (FLN), the National Rally for Democracy (RND), the Movement for Peace and Society (MSP) showed support to the third term.
• The Labour party counting 26 members backed the initiative in advance.
• The Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) opposed the third term describing the changes as a “constitutional coup.”
• President Bouteflika will have amended the constitution twice in two-term office in 2001 and 2008.