Who wants to drag the streets into anarchy and turmoil?

Several political analysts have blamed the six candidates vying for the April 17 presidential elections in Algeria for the serious drifts and reprehensible lapses recorded in the course of the ongoing electoral campaign which has now entered its second week.

The various candidates or their representatives didn’t refrain at times during their popular rallies from indulging in provocative and sweeping statements and deviated from the required explanations about their respective electoral programs, they underscored.

This only raised the deleterious tension and this untoward situation got on people’s nerves as the election campaign sometimes turned into a “free for all” with the various candidates or their representatives using offensive rhetorical statements bordering on sheer violence.

These kind of violent excesses were recorded earlier this week before a planned popular rally which was to be staged in the eastern coastal city of Bejaia by incumbent president’s Bouteflika’s election campaign manager Abdelmalek Sellal who was received there by violent protests.

Faced with the unexpected upsurge of violence by angry protesters opposed to Bouteflika’s fourth mandate, Sellal had been forced to cancel the Bejaia election rally on account of the scope of the violent protests which caused several injured, some of them critically hurt and widespread material damage.

These nefarious developments have been firmly denounced by several Algerian political personalities as well as by human rights groups who said that the election campaign should have been shorter and that the national election monitoring commission should use its prerogatives fully by setting “red lights” not to be infringed upon by any of the candidates so as not the mar the loyal competitive spirit which must prevail before and during the April 17 elections.