Algeria: Presidential Candidates Announced for December 12th Elections

Algeria has scheduled elections for December 12th. The presidential candidates were recently announced. Al Jazeera lists those running for president:

1. Former Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune
2. Former Prime Minister Ali Benflis
3. Former Culture Minister Azzedine Mihoubi
4. Former Tourism Minister Abdelkader Bengrine
5. Abdelaziz Belaid, head of the El Mostakbal Movement party

Some of the facts that Al Jazeera mentions are that all are establishment candidates, 23 candidates initially applied to run, and that each candidate had to get at least 50,000 signatures.



The article mentioned that all are establishment candidates and, to me, four of the five are rather obvious. I decided to look up Abdelaziz Belaid, head of the El Mostakbal Movement party, who I figure wasn't as obvious. Yes, he heads a political party, but is the political party part of the inner circle. What I came up with when searching on his name was the French version of Wikipedia. He's had a long history in Algerian politics since 1986. He was born in 1963 and is currently 56 years old so he's been in politics since around the age of 23.

BBC has an article up about the latest protests that marked the 65th anniversary of the war of independence against the French:

Protesters are demanding a "new revolution" and oppose the government's proposed election next month. Demonstrations in the capital on Friday were some of the largest since protests began in February. 

. . . Protesters do not want an election next month - they argue it would not be transparent or fair under the current political system. 

It is a rather short article and the above is 50% of the article. In my previous post on Algeria back in October, I mentioned that the protests were getting smaller, largely due to military and police suppression such as blocking major roads into Algiers.

So it is interesting that the BBC mentions that recent protests have grown in size and were some of the largest since protests began. It'll be interesting to see how this progresses through the elections in December, which are just 4 weeks away.

Here's a link to a recent Democracy Now video that interviews an Algerian journalist along with an Algerian community organizer in San Francisco. The journalist does somewhat praise both the protestors and military for keeping the protests peaceful.