Salah Goudjil to Echourouk: Belkhadem is following in the footsteps of ousted president Ben Bella

The leader of the reforming group at the National Liberation Front ( FLN) Salah Goudjil has slammed in a lengthy interview with Echourouk the incumbent Secretary General Abdelaziz Belkhadem , accusing him of breaching the party’s bylaws and crowning himself as a leader.

• He drew a close parallel between Belkhadem’s hegemony on the party and the attitude of the former president Ben Bella before the military coup of June 1965, noting that the deposed president didn’t abide by the party’s principles that extolled the virtues of collegial work advocated in Tripoli’s summit held in 1962.

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• The reformers’ foreman has indicated that his movement will not accept that Belkhadem uses his position as the personal representative of the president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to fulfil his objectives.

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• Echourouk:  Can you tell us about the latest developments concerning your reforming movement?

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• Goudjil: We have reached an important phase right now and already forwarded our future project and drawn up the future perspectives. The future step is bound to the previous ones.

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• Echourouk: You have been accused of sowing dissention within the National Liberation Front?

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• Goudjil: We are not looking forward to doing so, all we aspire to is to get back the party right on the track and give the relay to the faithful militants. It appears to the public opinion that we are going through turbulences but, in fact, we are doing our best endeavour to unite the ranks and restructuring the part’s apparatus.

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• Echourouk: What do you think about the accusations made by Ben Said concerning the presence of parties known for their opposition to the Algerian revolution inside the party’s structures?

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• Goudjil: The status of the party is quite clear and stipulates that top militants should prove their participation in the revolutionary war for those who were born before 1942.

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• Echourouk: Have you set up a date for the upcoming officials’ meeting?

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• Goudjil: No yet, but I can tell you that this event will take place before the holy month of Ramadan.

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• Echourouk: Do you accuse Belkhadem of dilapidating the party’s funds?

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• Goudjil: No… when we accuse someone we have to show evidence and consequently go to justice. Belkhadem has announced during the party’s ninth meeting that he didn’t spend a penny from the party’s fund and that the expenses were covered by the militant’s donations. The cost was worth 70 million DZD and now I’m wandering where did he manage to get this sum?

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• Echourouk: In his quality of the party’s honorary chairman, can the president Bouteflika call for and Extraordinary Assembly to end the stalemate and have you ever asked his referral in the crisis?

• Goudjil: Indeed… the president can do it but we didn’t asked him to do so and never tried to contact him but if he decides to call up an extraordinary assembly, we will back the move.

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• Echourouk:Were the events of June 1965 a military coup or a reformatory project?

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• Goudjil: It was rather the second option.

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• Echourouk: How?

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• Goudjil:  The former president Ben Bella didn’t abide by the party’s principles that extolled the virtues of collegial work advocated in Tripoli’s summit held in 1962 and was working unilaterally. That was the main cause of his ousting from power through a military coup.

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