The Algerian government on Saturday dispatched female police officers and community officials on a nationwide campaign to call on women to vote in local elections scheduled for October 10th.
The campaign comes amidst concerns that the estimated 53 percent of voters who stayed away during parliamentary elections on May 30 were mainly women. State television showed the women officials talking, walking and chatting with women and girls in the provinces and urging them to come out and vote.
In the meantime, Hocine Ait Ahmed, the leader of one of Algeria's main opposition parties, the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), said on Saturday his party would not boycott the October local elections, AFP reported.
In remarks carried by local newspapers, Ahmed said he did not want to leave a political void in the party's troubled Berber heartland of Kabylie in the northwest. "The local administration keeps us in direct touch with the people and that is the most important of all dialogue," he said. (Albawaba.com)
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