Bouteflika’s camp: Lakhdar Brahimi is Algerian and Bouteflika didn’t internationalize the April 17 elections

In his second TV appearance over the past 48 hours, incumbent Abdellaziz Bouteflika again hit out against the violent language used during the recent election campaign specifically alluding to candidate Ali Benflis whom he accused of seeking to sow an atmosphere of chaos and turmoil in case of a defeat in the April 17 presidential polls.

Bouteflika renewed his admonishments when receiving on Sunday the UN-Arab league envoy to Syria, veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi who was on a short visit to Algeria.

 Incumbent President Bouteflika first raised this verbal violence issue which marred the election campaign when he received earlier this week the visiting Spanish foreign affairs minister José Garcia Margallo Marfil with whom he evoked the pre-election campaigning in Algeria in addition to other key issues of common concern.

 In a reaction, the Benflis camp rejected Bouteflika’s accusations as an electoral ploy stressing that the incumbent President was overtly seeking to internationalize the Algeria elections in a bid to win the favours of foreign states in his re-election bid.

 This was firmly brushed aside as pure allegations and delusions by one of Bouteflika’s representative who argued that in pinpointing the untoward violent language issue, the incumbent President was concerned about the safety and security of the people in the post-election period.

 He pointed out that Bouteflika was specifically referring to the serious threats leveled by Ali Benflis against the Walis or Governors and their family members after the date of April 17 in case the next elections are marred by malpractice and ballot rigging, as Benflis bluntly put it during a recent election campaign rally.

At a rare public appearance over the weekend, the 77-year-old incumbent accused Benflis of fomenting violence.

“When a candidate threatens walis (provincial governors) and tells officials to beware – for their families and children – in case of [electoral] fraud, what does that mean?” asked Bouteflika in a TV appearance on Saturday, before answering: That’s “terrorism via the television”.

Bouteflika was responding to a statement by Benflis calling on walis not to engage in electoral fraud.

After 15 years in office, Bouteflika is running for a fourth consecutive term following a controversial 2008 constitutional amendment, which scrapped a two-term limit.