Algeria's 19 year-old state of emergency to be lifted shortly, President Bouteflika says
Algeria will lift the state of emergency that has been in effect since 1992 in the “very near future,” President Abdellaziz Bouteflika said during a cabinet meeting held Thursday in Algiers.
- “In order to stop any unfounded speculation on this subject, I ordered the government to immediately draw up appropriate provisions which will allow the state to continue the fight against terrorism until its eradication, and with the same effectiveness,” President Bouteflika asserted.
- President Bouteflika charged the government with finding an alternative method to combat the scourge of terrorism.
- He insisted that the state of emergency “didn’t at any moment hinder pluralist political activity in the country.”
- The president said the state of emergency had been imposed “for the only purposes of the fight against terrorism, and it is this reason only which has justified maintaining it on a legal basis”.
- Still, he stipulated that the ban on demonstrations in the capital will be maintained even after the nationwide state of emergency is lifted.
- “For well-known reasons of public order,” demonstrations in the capital will be permitted only inside certain buildings, Bouteflika said.
- President Bouteflika said protest marches, banned under the state of emergency, would be permitted everywhere except the capital.
- “The capital is an exception in this respect for well-known reasons of public order and certainly not in order to prevent any form of expression,” he said.
- President Bouteflika also said the government should adopt new measures to promote job creation, and that Algerian television and radios should give airtime to all political parties.
- But the head of state said: “Political parties and registered national organizations must in particular take account of the provisions of the constitution and laws on political activities.”
- “Freedom should not end in a situation where you have things sliding out of control or anarchy, which have already cost Algeria a lot.”, he stressed.