Ali Benhadj:“I’ll observe sit-in in front of Interior Ministry if my election bid is scrapped”

The number two in command of the outlawed Salvation Front Party (FIS), Ali Benhadj, has threatened to observe a sit-in outside the Ministry of the Interior and Local Assemblies in Algiers in case his projected bid for next April’s presidential elections is ignored and rejected by the relevant authorities.

Ali Benhadj’s reaction came after he was refused access on Sunday to the premises of the Interior Ministry where he sought to secure the required application forms for the registration as a candidate for the upcoming presidential polls.

He dubbed the authorities’ barring move as “irresponsible” in a statement to Echorouk stressing that he wouldn’t relent in his endeavour to retrieve what he called his “flouted political and civic rights” as any other Algerian citizen.

To recall, the outlawed FIS party firebrand was released from jail in 2003 after serving a 12-year long prison sentence in connection with the tragic events which wracked Algeria in the 1990’s.

Since then, Ali Benhadj hasn’t missed any opportunity to hit out against the rulers’ policy line in scathing statements to various media-outlets.

In the wake of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s latest hospitalization in France, the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front’s (FIS) deputy leader, Ali Benhadj, said that Algeria is in a worse state today than when the president took office. Speaking in May to a London-based Arab newspaper, he called on the president to leave power. He emphasized that Bouteflika “took power of an ailing country and will leave it in an even worse state”.

Criticizing Bouteflika’s claims of development and achievements, the Islamist leader said: “What some people consider achievements are in fact projects that go back to the initial years of Algeria’s hard-won independence. However, their implementation has been delayed for more than 35 years.”

He added that “some of these achievements were made thanks to suspicious deals that plundered huge sums of public money. Benhadj stressed the people’s hopes are being suppressed and their legitimate rights are being denied”, as he put it.

Ali Benhadj also told the newspaper: “We must differentiate between the health of the president and that of any ordinary citizen. The president’s health will have a telling impact on society at large and state institutions as well. The ailing state becomes even sicker when the president is ill, especially as the president holds broad powers, he argued.”