Madani Mezrag, chief of former Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), military wing of dissolved Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), announced, on behalf of Rabah Kebir Group, name lists of FIS’s candidates for parliamentary and municipal elections, expected within this year, are being prepared. These candidates will enter elections through a small Arabian-Islamic party. The team militating with Rabah Kebir, head of “Islamic Salvation Front Executive Office”, will officially announce their partaking in elections, at a news conference he is to held, along with Kebir, soon, Mezrag says in a statement to Al Khabar. We endeavour to get some seats in parliament and local councils, points out Mezrag adding “we have the right for political practice, and there is a presidential decree allowing us to take part in elections…,” Mezrag was referring to the decree issued by President Bouteflika, in 2000, in favour of AIS’s 6000 armed troops. This decree grants us political rights, he stresses.
”We are aware it is impossible to create a political party at present, that’s why we opted for participating in elections within a small Arabian-Islamic party, in which our candidates are to form the back bone”, said he refusing to unveil the names of the concerned party. Mezrag promised dissolved FIS’s activists a strong comeback for 2012: “we will have more representatives after five years…” To Al-Khabar question on Home Minister’s decision not to allow FIS’s members to take part in elections, former AIS chief replies “we won’t declare war if one of our candidates is rejected, but Interior Minister’s attitude is not appropriate. He has made a lot of harm to the State. He gives the impression there are neither a State nor law (in Algeria)”. “I think Zerhouni (Minister of the Interior) has a narcissistic personality”, Mezrag adds.
Asked what if FIS’s historical leaders, with Abassi Madani and Ali Benhadj on the top, don’t give their approval for the concerned candidates, Mezrag said “we respect them, like them, and recognize their achievements but this does not mean we will confine ourselves to certain ideas, we will take any step we deem it to be in the interest of Algerian people”.