Fired: Secretary-General of Algeria's High Independent Authority for Election Monitoring

Algeria’s Acting President Abdelkader Bensalah dismissed on Sunday the Secretary-General of Algeria’s High Independent Authority for Election (HIISE).

According to Algerian newspaper Ennahar, the Algerian presidency said that the Algerian interim president dismissed Fouad Makhlouf, Secretary-General of the HIISE, in preparation for the formation of the new authority in accordance with the new law approved by the House of Representatives.

Abdelkader Bensalah also signed the law passed by the House of Representatives on the establishment of an independent national authority to monitor and organise elections in Algeria, as well as the law on the organisation of elections.

According to a statement by the Presidency of the Republic, the signing came after the completion of all the procedures stipulated by the Constitution, and after the Constitutional Council informed the president about them.

Read: Algerian parliament approves legal provisions for elections

The Algerian Cabinet approved days ago, for the first time, a bill to form an “Independent Authority for Election Monitoring,” to be a “permanent rather than a temporary body”, during the first meeting of the Cabinet, headed by Bensalah.

According to Algeria Press Service, the Minister of Justice Belkacem Zeghmati stressed that the ratification of the two organic bills related to the High Independent Authority for Election and the electoral system truly reflects the good intentions of the country’s higher authorities to re-ensure the people’s freedom of expression and to rule according to their views, through the holding of free, honest and transparent elections.

Among the most significant amendments introduced in the new electoral law are

• The elimination of the requirement to obtain 600 individual signatures from members of local councils for presidential candidates,
• The reduction of the number of individual signatures of voters,
• Instead, the candidate must collect from 60,000 to 50,000 signatures across at least 25 governorates,
• The reduction of the minimum number of signatures required for each of the concerned governorates from 1500 to 1200,
• The stipulation of a  university degree for candidacy.