Ouyahia tipped as favourite to take over Bouteflika’s election campaign

Sources close to the entourage of President AbdellazizBouteflika have revealed that former Prime Minister and former secretary general of the RND party, Ahmed Ouyahia, is well poised to become manager of President Bouteflika’s election campaign if the latter decides after all to run in next April’s presidential electoral contest.

Ahmed Ouyahia will act as coordinator among those political parties which have already chosen incumbent Bouteflika as their own candidate for the upcoming elections slated for April 17^th 2014.

The same sources told Echorouk that AbdellazizBouteflikais now biding his time and has yet to decide to vie or not for a new term in the forthcoming polls.

In 2009, Bouteflika announced his candidacy on February 12^th of the same year and the 1999 elections were set for April 8^th.

Comparatively, this time-frame gives Bouteflika 7 days to go to announce his stand vis à vis the next electoral contest even though the incumbent President has by virtue of the electoral law until March 3^rd 2014 to declare his intentions.

The four main parties bucking Bouteflika’s new election bid for a fourth straight mandate at the helm of the nation include the FLN, the RND, TAJ and MPA which have been clamouring for weeks now that Bouteflika will seek a fresh term in office.

The same sources also indicated that the leaderships of these four allied parties were utterly in favour of the idea of seeing Ahmed Ouyahia spearhead the incumbent President’s election campaign owing to his political acumen and experience despite his unpopularity among wide segments of the population.