 |
|---|
| This article is part of a series on the politics and government of Algeria |
Constitution |
Elections to the new People's National Assembly were held in Algeria on 25 February 1977. They were the first parliamentary elections since 1964, as the previous National Assembly had been dissolved in 1965, and were held as a result of the country's new constitution and electoral law being promulgated the year before.
The People's National Assembly, abbreviated APN, is the lower house of the Algerian Parliament. It is composed of 462 members directly elected by the population. Of the 462 seats, 8 are reserved for Algerians living abroad. Members of the People's National Assembly are directly elected through proportional representation in multiple-member districts and serve terms lasting five years at a time. The last election for this body was held on 17 May 2017. This body and of the Algerian Parliament is seen as nonrepresentative of the Algerian people's interest because of the presidency, which controls the majority of governmental power. The minimum age required for election into the APN is 28.
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The capital and most populous city is Algiers, located in the far north of the country on the Mediterranean coast. With an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, and the largest in Africa. Algeria is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia, to the east by Libya, to the west by Morocco, to the southwest by the Western Saharan territory, Mauritania, and Mali, to the southeast by Niger, and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1,541 communes (counties). It has the highest Human development index of all non-island African countries.
The new Assembly had 261 members, elected from 160 constituencies (daira). [1] Constituencies with less than 80,000 inhabitants had one representative; constituencies with more than 80,000 residents had one extra representative for every 20,000 inhabitants over 80,000.
As the country was a one-party state at the time, the National Liberation Front was the only party to run in the election. It put forward 783 candidates (of which 39 were women), and claimed all 261 seats (nine of which went to female candidates). 6,037,537 of the country's 7,960,000 registered voters (75.84%) took part in the election. [1]
A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of state in which one political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other parties are either outlawed or allowed to take only a limited and controlled participation in elections. Sometimes the term de facto one-party state is used to describe a dominant-party system that, unlike the one-party state, allows democratic multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning the elections.
The National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was the principal nationalist movement during the Algerian War and the sole legal and the ruling political party of the Algerian state until other parties were legalised in 1989.
