Al Jazeera News :
Algerians are voting on a revised constitution the government hopes will finally neutralise a protest movement that, at its peak last year, swept longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power.
Bouteflika’s successor Abdelmadjid Tebboune, currently hospitalised overseas, has pitched the text as meeting the demands of the Hirak, a movement that staged vast weekly demonstrations for more than a year until the coronavirus pandemic stopped rallies.
But despite a determined government media campaign for a resounding “Yes” vote to usher in a “new Algeria”, observers say the document offers little new.
“Nothing has changed. The ultra-presidential regime will stay,” said Massensen Cherbi, a constitutional expert at the Paris political science institute, Sciences Po.
Tebboune has placed Sunday’s referendum at the forefront of efforts to turn the page on the Hirak movement.
The amendments limit the presidential tenure to two five-year terms and commit the president to choosing a prime minister from the majority bloc in parliament.
The proposed changes, however, also give the head of state the power to appoint the governor of the central bank, the chief justice of the constitutional court, and four of its 12 members.
Symbolically, the vote is being held on the 66th anniversary of Algeria’s war of independence from France.
In an apparent attempt to stir patriotic feelings, the draft document was publicised under an official emblem reading: “November 1954 Liberation; November 2020 Change.”
Algerians are voting on a revised constitution the government hopes will finally neutralise a protest movement that, at its peak last year, swept longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power.
Bouteflika’s successor Abdelmadjid Tebboune, currently hospitalised overseas, has pitched the text as meeting the demands of the Hirak, a movement that staged vast weekly demonstrations for more than a year until the coronavirus pandemic stopped rallies.
But despite a determined government media campaign for a resounding “Yes” vote to usher in a “new Algeria”, observers say the document offers little new.
“Nothing has changed. The ultra-presidential regime will stay,” said Massensen Cherbi, a constitutional expert at the Paris political science institute, Sciences Po.
Tebboune has placed Sunday’s referendum at the forefront of efforts to turn the page on the Hirak movement.
The amendments limit the presidential tenure to two five-year terms and commit the president to choosing a prime minister from the majority bloc in parliament.
The proposed changes, however, also give the head of state the power to appoint the governor of the central bank, the chief justice of the constitutional court, and four of its 12 members.
Symbolically, the vote is being held on the 66th anniversary of Algeria’s war of independence from France.
In an apparent attempt to stir patriotic feelings, the draft document was publicised under an official emblem reading: “November 1954 Liberation; November 2020 Change.”
