Belaïz: “Algeria will witness a constitutional revision in the coming months”

The Algerian authorities have kept up a wanton blur regarding the amendment to the country’s Constitution, with the Minister of the Interior and local assemblies, Tayeb Belaïz, announcing the day before yesterday, that Algeria will experience over the next few months a Constitutional revision, but without giving a specific date or a precise agenda for it.

The Interior Minister said, in his address to the participants in the recently-held proceedings of the Council of Arab Interior Ministers, at the Palace of the Nations, on the west coast of Algiers, that  this planned constitutional revamping is considered to complement the salutary political reforms launched by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Four years after his speech to the Nation,  exactly on 15 April 2011, during which President Abdelaziz Bouteflika,  formally pledged to amend the country’s Constitution, and initiate other much-awaited political reforms, the much-vaunted issue of the Constitution overhaul has so far been left on “backburner” for still murky reasons which the relevant authorities don’t want to expound overtly.

“This paramount issue has remained in limbo, and each time it is thrown out to the national public opinion, but it quickly fades away and it fails to be addressed seriously and for good by the decision-makers”, as explained by a former constitutional council member, Mr Amar Rekhila in a statement to “Echorouk”.

He also noted that this protracted delay is partly due to the lingering divergences among some senior officials on this pending issue as evidenced notably by the antagonistic posture adopted behind the scenes by notably the speakers of the lower and upper houses of Parliament, Mr Larbi Ould Khelifa and Mr Abdelkader Bensaleh respectively.