New law on microscopic parties and dead voters trigger controversy in Parliament

Articles 73 and 94 of the new law on elections raised a controversy at Parliament during a hearing session of the interior minister Nourredine Badaoui. Members of Parliament called for taking enough time to implement the articles.

The articles stipulate that political parties must have more than 4 percent of votes to run for local or legislative elections.

Member of Parliament’s legal committee Nacer Hamamdouche said most of the deputies believe that the articles will “eliminate seasonal and opportunist parties” which exploit elections to show up. 

“The two articles will push parties to show real presence in the political scene. There are some parties which have no popular representation,” he told Echorouk.

Members of Parliament were sceptic about the elections transparency as previous experiences showed that voters list included dead people and children.

“Badaoui implicitly admitted that the list of voters is not verified as he said that the government will modernize the administration to eliminate all those doubts,” he added.

Earlier, legal affairs director Mohamed Talbi said the list of voters included 3 million dead people.