President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Algeria’s parliament is set to meet from Wednesday onwards to adopt a revision draft of the constitution, limiting the number of presidential terms down to two, the presidency said.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika signed a decree to put that into effect on Saturday, AFP reported. The revision plan is meant to restore the two-term limit which was suppressed in 2008.
This enabled Bouteflika, first elected as president in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 for another five-year term, to stand again in 2009 and 2014.
The 78-year-old appeared just once during the campaign of the 2014 election, in a wheelchair after suffering a stroke the year before. Moreover, public appearances by Bouteflika are rare, and are restricted to the local television when foreign figureheads visit.
Introducing the revisions draft this month, Bouteflika’s chief of staff Ahmed Ouyahia said that in 2008 the president had responded to a call by the people to remain in office.
The constitutional revision would boost the status of the Berber dialect Tamazight to official language and also prevent Algerians holding more than one nationality from standing in elections for public office. Which is a notion that specifically strokes a nerve with many Algerians in France who are citizens of both countries.
Also on Saturday, the presidency confirmed the creation of a new intelligence organization following the dissolution of the powerful Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS).
“The DRS has been dissolved and replaced by three security branches reporting directly to the presidency,” Ouyahia said.
Retired general Athman Tartag, an ex-security adviser to Bouteflika, is to head the new DSS.
He was named in September as successor to longtime DRS chief General Mohamed Mediene , also known as General Toufik, head of a shadowy intelligence service that many viewed as a “state within a state”.
The move places the entire security apparatus under Bouteflika’s direct control, with Tartag reporting to him on the activities of all the country’s intelligence services.
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Source: Asharq Alawsat
Full Article: Algeria’s President Calls for Revision of the Constitution
