Belkhadem and Saadani disagree on many points

Demo presence of the former Secretary-General of the National Liberation Front, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, and what followed from violent response by Amar Saadani, raised a number of questions about the background of this appearance, especially as the country is preparing for the coming Presidential Elections.

severity of doubts would have been raised by the circumstance and way through which Belkhadem tries to return back to the party’s front, after nearly a year of compulsive absence, as the former Secretary-General of the party deliberately decided to delay his presence in the meeting, until Saadani started reciting his speech and until everyone was sitting, in order to draw the attention of the audience, in a scene that befuddled Saadani, who was not, perhaps, expecting that this “unwelcome” will attend the meeting, according to some who some of those who were there.

Even if Belkhadem asserted that he attended the meeting to support President Bouteflika’s Fourth Term, but observers of the old party affairs, suspected this statement, especially since the former Prime Minister, did not show an effect in the Central Committee meeting, that was held on November 16 of last year, which resulted in the party nomination, in an official capacity of President Bouteflika in the upcoming Presidential Elections.

As the sudden presence of Belkhadem in the Olympic Hall is more than justified, because the man deliberately was absent from the last date of the Central Committee, that was held on August 29, 2013, when Amar Saadani was elected FLN’s Secretary-General. So why did he chose to attend FLN meeting on last Saturday?

Answer to this question can be found in two locations. The first in the statement that was issued by the party’s Secretary-General on Monday, in a press conference that was held at the headquarters of the Central Committee in Algiers’ Hydra, in which he said: “If the presence of Belkhadem in the meeting aimed to support Bouteflika’s fourth term, so he is welcome, otherwise, we tell him that FLN is neither a noon for riding nor a breast for drinking milk”.

Belkhadem used to say this phrase to reply to his opponents when he was the party’s first responsible.