Algeria: Louisa Hanoune Directs Fire at Presidential Alliance

Louisa Hanoune Directs Fire at Presidential Alliance

(excerpted from Liberté-Algérie, April 21, 2012)

By Kamel Bouabdellah

Correspondent

Louisa Hanoune was the keynote speaker on Thursday morning at a mass meeting at the sports stadium of Chelghoum-Laïd. Sparing no punches, Ms. Hanoune blasted the recently accredited political parties and the late presidential coalition, formed by the trio of FLN, RND, MSP.

Ms. Hanoune insisted that the new political parties are nothing more than creations serving the robber-barons and Big Business. She warned that "these so-called political parties have no political agenda nor popular support. They are instruments in the hands of the corporations."

Doing a flashback to the presidential coalition, the speaker, true to her convictions, characterized the presidential alliance as servants of the multinationals seeking to take over the country's wealth. "The presidential coalition parties have trampled upon the resources of the country," Ms. Hanoune stated. "They have played a sinister, in fact scandalous, role in pushing the all-out privatization of our resources and public industrial sector. They have outsourced our resources to the multinationals to promote their personal interests to the detriment of the interests of the nation." ...

The next day, at a jam-packed rally in Constantine, Ms. Hanoune called on the population to vote massively on May 10 in a fiery speech that focused on the defense of workers' rights and on the PT's political program. Her speech also warned of the threats to Algeria by the "lobbies of capitalism," pointing to what has occurred of late in Libya and Tunisia.

Ms. Hanoune, once again, attacked the other political parties across the political spectrum, arguing that only the PT program is able to protect workers and citizens. "We need a new Constitution that prohibits the use of religion for political purposes," she stated. "We will create 3 million jobs for young people and these are not just promises, our agenda is ambitious in contrast to all the new parties, which should be ignored. Algeria needs to get rid of the one-party State and its influence and corruption."

With regard to the ambition of its candidates for Constantine, the president of PT said that "despite the fraud in 2007, the PT managed to win two seats in Constantine. This time we will win many more seats -- which is why we need to prevent them from rigging the polls."

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