Algeria’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for July 2, are still weeks away, and the Algerian regime has already ensured that the outcome will disappoint no one in power. The mechanism is not crude ballot-stuffing or outright candidate bans, though those tools remain available. It is something more refined: administrative suffocation, deployed with deniability and enforced through bureaucratic inertia. The opposition is not being suppressed. It is simply being buried in paperwork.

Under Algeria’s amended electoral law, parties that lack a sufficient number of elected local officials must compensate by collecting voter signatures, known as tazkiyat, to qualify their candidate lists. The threshold is not unreasonable on paper. In practice, it has become an instrument of exclusion. Parties including Jil Jadid (New Generation), the Union of Democratic Forces, Vanguards of Liberties, the Workers’ Party, the Socialist Forces Front, and the Rally for Culture and Democracy have all reported severe difficulties collecting and certifying the required signatures before the May 18 deadline. The complaints are consistent: municipal employees refused for days to authenticate the collection forms, citing the absence of official instructions from higher authorities. By the time those instructions arrived, or were grudgingly........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)