ALGERIA: Worker's Party Secretary-General Louisa Hanoune set to run for Algerian Presidency

Record ID: 573653

  • Title: ALGERIA: Worker's Party Secretary-General Louisa Hanoune set to run for Algerian Presidency
  • Date: 23rd February 2009
  • Summary: AUDIENCE HOLDING FLAGS AND SINGING ALGERIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM HANOUNE STANDING IN FRONT OF HER PORTRAIT AND SINGING ALGERIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM CROWD SINGING NATIONAL ANTHEM
  • Embargoed: 10th March 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Algeria
  • Country: Algeria
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9ALMDT00R7KDW5PYYAQ40TJLP
  • Story Text: Louisa Hanoune, the leader of the Algerian Worker's Party (Parti Travailliste), announced her candidacy for the 2009 Algerian Presidential election on Friday (February 20), making her the only female to run in the April poll.
    The National Assembly and Central Committee appointed Hanoune, their Secretary General, as the PT candidate at a meeting on Thursday (February 19).
    According to the PT, she received 140,000 signatures from voters who supported her candidacy, surpassing the 75,000 minimum.
    The PT is a Trotskyite group, led by Hanoune, who in the 2004 presidential election became the first Algerian woman to run for the office.
    She received 1 percent of the vote, which translated into 21 seats in the Algerian Parliament.
    She announced her candidacy at the Atlas Conference Rooms in the capital Algiers. During her speech, she unveiled her slogan: "Popular Autonomy safeguards National Autonomy", as she sought to quell criticism that the 2009 election results were a foregone conclusion.
    "Both the leadership and the base of the Worker's Party have charged me, as their Secretary-General, with a very important mission, that of being the PT's candidate in the presidential election of April 9, 2009. Our slogan will be: Popular Autonomy safeguards National Autonomy," said Hanoune.
    The decision by Algerian lawmakers to scrap a constitutional rule limiting presidents to a maximum of two five-year mandates has enabled the incumbent president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to run for a third term.
    No weighty opponent has emerged to challenge the head of state, who is widely tipped to win the election and stay in power until 2014.
    The lack of serious challengers has prompted some government critics to predict that Algerians will boycott the polls in protest at what they see as a meaningless exercise.
    The north African country had just one legal political party after independence in 1962 -- the National Liberation Front (FLN) which led the overthrow of former colonial power France.
    Multi-party politics and a freer press arrived in 1989 but Bouteflika's FLN and a clutch of loyalist parties still dominate the system. Parties based on overtly religious or ethnic lines are banned.
    Government critics have not called officially for a boycott but many have forecast a repeat of 2007 legislative elections, when the turnout was a record-low 35 percent.
    The government has launched a campaign to encourage Algerians to use their vote.
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