Bin Hammoudah strongly criticizes Butaflika as abusing power

The former secretary general of the National Liberation Front party, Bu'lam Bin Hammoudah, has criticized the Algerian President Abdul Aziz Butaflika, and accused him of "clinging to power by all means, and of "irresponsible behavior."

This was expressed in a document under the title "Analyzing the current political condition" in Algeria.

Bin Hammoudah was presiding over the National Liberation Front, when it supported the nomination of Butaflika for the presidential elections in April 1999. Bin Hammoudah resigned during the 8th congress of the party in March 2003, and proposed to be replaced by the current secretary general Ali Benflis, to be also the candidate for the party to the presidential elections due in April this year.

Bin Hammoudah described the attacks against the Liberation Front party, which the Algerian judiciary decided to freeze all its activities on December 30th, as "illegal and illegitimate" and a result of " theparty's rejection to nominating Butaflika for a second term of office."

Bin Hammoudah considered that when the president ignores "the party which supported him during the elections, when he ignores democracy and the law of the majority, and when he seeks to stay in power and monopolize the state's system for a personal authority similar to the royal regime, a president as such is ready to do anything to have Algeria drowned in chaos."