Algerian lawmakers on Tuesday appointed a regime stalwart as interim president, dismaying protesters seeking sweeping change after the resignation of former Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who ruled the country for two decades.
The selection of President of the Council of the Nation Abdelkader Bensalah, 77, as Algeria’s first new president in 20 years followed constitutional rules, but went against the demands of demonstrators pushing for him and other top politicians to stand down.
The upper house speaker, a trusted ally of Bouteflika, later pledged to organize a “transparent” presidential election within 90 days, as laid out by the constitution.
Photo: Reuters
“We — citizens, the political class and state institutions — must work to ensure that the conditions, all conditions, are right for a transparent and regular presidential poll,” Bensalah said in a televised address.
Opposition parties refused to back the appointment of the establishment insider and boycotted the session, as thousands of students protested against him in Algiers.
“They haven’t heard us. We will continue to march,” they shouted, clutching handwritten placards and Algerian flags.
For the first time in seven weeks, police in the capital fired tear gas to try to disperse the protest by students, who were also hit with water cannons.
“Peaceful, peaceful,” they chanted, raising their arms in the air as they were surrounded by police.
The students were echoing calls made on Friday last week — in the first weekly mass protest since Bouteflika announced his departure after losing the military’s support — when Algerians demanded regime insiders be excluded from the political transition.
“Bensalah, Bouteflika, it’s the same thing,” said 20-year-old Roumaissa, an Algerian flag draped around her shoulders during Tuesday’s student protest.
Ahead of Bensalah’s appointment, an editorial in the pro-government daily El Moudjahid suggested that he should step aside from the presidential post.
He is “not tolerated by the citizen movement, which demands his immediate departure,” or by the opposition and various political groups in both houses of parliament, the newspaper said.
Three men in particular have drawn demonstrators’ ire: Bensalah, Algerian Constitutional Council President Tayeb Belaiz and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui.
The protest movement is calling for a new transitional framework that is committed to deep reforms and organizing free elections.
Human Rights Watch said that Bouteflika’s departure is “at most a first step in ending autocratic rule.”
“During any transitional phase, authorities should fully respect the rights of Algerians to speak, assemble and associate with one another,” the watchdog said in a statement.
Algerians of all ages have rallied since late February against Bouteflika, who resigned a week ago after efforts to appease demonstrators proved fruitless.
Facing endemic unemployment, young Algerians hope that the protest movement can ultimately improve their prospects.
“It must change. Today, young people in Algeria are without a future,” said Yassine, a 21-year-old studying construction technology.
Although Bouteflika’s resignation was celebrated by demonstrators, they have remained firm in pushing for a wider overhaul of the political system.
The country’s youth are “the wealth of Algeria,” physics teacher Rabea said. “It’s them who will make the future of the country, they must be listened to.”
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS