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TEHRAN, Mar 11 - More than 1,000 judges said they would refuse to oversee Algeria's election next month if President Abdelaziz Bouteflika contests it, in one of the biggest blows to the ailing leader since the start of protests now in their third week.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - In a statement on Sunday, the judges added that they were forming a new association "to restore the gift of justice". Bouteflika returned to Algeria on Sunday after undergoing medical treatment in Switzerland.
"We announce our intention to abstain from ... supervising the election process against the will of the people, which is the only source of power," said the judges.
Judges should join an effort to "declare that we are the people", the judges said in a statement.
The 82-year-old Bouteflika faces the toughest fight of his 20-year-old rule, following a tenure in which he became the north African country's most powerful president in 30 years.
Algerians from all social classes have rejected his plan to secure a fifth term in April elections, a move protesters feel would perpetuate a stale political system dominated by veterans of an independence war against France that ended in 1962.
"Bouteflika is back, we delivered a message, we need a response, and we need a response now,” pharmacist Mouloud Mohamed, 29, told Reuters.
Source: Reuters
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