16.01.12 Algeria Focus
Ahmed Ouyahia will not stand down as Prime Minister
The congress of Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia's RND party was being held on Friday 6th th January as we went to press last
week. It also came a few days after opposition party spokesmen had called on
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to appoint a new Prime Minister and Cabinet before the forthcoming
parliamentary elections on the grounds that the present incumbents could not
guarantee a
fair election.
Ouyahia gave a typically belligerent response. He announced on Saturday 7 th
that he would not resign in the face of opposition parties' demands for a
technocratic government to guide the country through the May elections. “I will remain in my post and will not resign,” he told reporters. “The decision to disband the government belongs to the person who nominated it,” he added, referring to the president.
The most politically relevant moment of the Congress was Ouhayia's questioning
of Bouteflika's presidency. Rumours, put out by the president's camp, that
Bouteflika is considering a fourth presidential term after the next
presidential
elections, scheduled for 2014, have been circulating for the last few weeks. In
his
address to the RND Congress, Ouyahia questioned whether Bouteflika should seek
a
fourth term. Ouyahia asked the Congress whether another term for the ailing 75
year-old would serve Algeria's interests.
The statement was interpreted by RND members and reporters that Ouyahia was
laying down his marker for the 2014 presidential election. Ouyahia, 61, told
reporters, however, that it was too early for him to address whether he would
run in
the 2014 presidential election.
In 2008, the constitution was changed to scrap the two-term limit of
presidential terms, thus allowing Bouteflika to run for a third term. Ouyahia
defended his
support for that change, saying that the country needed Bouteflika at a time
when Algeria was recovering from its 1990s insurgency.
For more news and expert analysis about Algeria, please see Algeria Focus and Algeria Politics & Security.
© 2012 Menas Associates