Algerian president announces constitutional change

30 october 2008

ALGIER (AFP) — Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced on Wednesday that limited changes would be made to the country's constitution in the coming judicial year.

In a speech to mark the beginning of that year he said that the revised version would have new measures "devoted to promoting women's political rights and widening their representation in elected assemblies at all levels," according to the official APS news agency.

He gave no date for the introduction of the reforms.

Bouteflika said his proposals to the country's parliament aimed "to enrich the institutional system with the bases of stability, efficacity and continuity," the agency said.

That process would be based on the "protection of the symbols of the glorious revolution ... so that nobody can touch, change for the worse or manipulate them."

It would concern the "reorganisation, precision and clarification of prerogatives and relationships between the constituent elements of the executive without, however, touching the balances of powers."

He said the revision would "allow the people to exercise their legitimate right to choose those who govern them and renew their confidence in them in all sovereignty."

He did not mention whether the revision of the constitution would concern the existing limit of two presidential terms. Algerian media have speculated that Bouteflika would like to abolish it.