Algeria MPs close parliament, demand speaker resigns

Around 200 deputies kept Algeria’s parliament locked up for several hours on Tuesday in a protest action to press demands for the house speaker to step down, AFP reported.

Speaking to AFP, the head of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Abdelhamid Si Affif, said: “We are here to demand the speaker resigns.”

The protesters blocked the entrance of the parliament with a chain and padlock.

Said Bouhadja, president of Algeria’s lower house, has been under pressure to resign since late September over charges of “mismanagement, exaggerated and illicit expenses and dubious recruitment”.

“This doesn’t scare me. I will go to the People’s National Assembly [parliament] because I am the president of this institution,” Bouhadja told the TSA news website.

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Asharq Al-Awsat has reported earlier his month that Bouhadja said that his opponents had demanded his resignation, but that the presidency and its close inner circles wanted him to stay on.

“I informed them that I must be convinced that I committed major errors in order to resign or I should receive a message or telephone call from the president himself to step down,” he said.