President Tebboune ends the mandate of the High Authority for Transparency chief and appoints her interim successor Copy link

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune received Dr. Khalida Boufdach, the newly elected Speaker of the People’s National Assembly, and congratulated her on her historic achievement at the head of Algeria’s lower house of Parliament.

During the meeting, President Tebboune praised Dr. Boufdach’s election as a significant milestone in Algeria’s political history, as she becomes the first woman to assume the presidency of the People’s National Assembly since its establishment.

The President expressed his confidence in her ability to lead the institution with responsibility, dedication, and a commitment to serving the interests of the nation.

Dr. Khalida Boufdach thanked the President for his congratulations and reaffirmed her determination to fulfill her constitutional mission, strengthen the role of Parliament, and promote dialogue and cooperation among all institutions.

This official reception reflects the importance attached to her election and highlights the growing role of Algerian women in the country’s highest political and institutional positions.

Algeria Breaks Nine Decades of Male Leadership at the APN

Algeria’s People’s National Assembly has a new speaker, and for the first time in the country’s independent history, it is a woman. Dr. Khalida Boufdache, the National Liberation Front deputy for Algiers, was elected president of the lower chamber with 302 votes, against 57 for Amine Alouch and 7 for Rachid Hassani. The result reflected the six-party parliamentary majority that had rallied behind her candidacy the FLN, the RND, El Bina, Mostakbal, Sawt Ech-Chaab, and the independent bloc.

From the Clinic to the Chamber

Boufdache’s path to Algeria’s third-highest protocol position was built, not inherited. Born on May 27, 1982, she graduated as a general practitioner from the University of Algiers in 2008 and went on to specialize in allergy and clinical immunology, earning her Specialized Studies Diploma in 2019. Her clinical record runs through Aïn Taya Public Hospital and Beni Messous University Hospital before she moved into public-health management, where she has headed a department at the Algiers Directorate of Health since 2023.

Her entry into elected office came in parallel with her medical career. She sat on the Bordj El Bahri Municipal People’s Assembly from 2012 to 2017 and has represented Algiers on the provincial assembly since 2021. Within the FLN, she serves on the Central Committee and has led the party’s Women’s Committee in the Dar El Beïda district a platform from which she has consistently pushed for greater representation of women in public office.

A Consensus Candidate

What distinguishes Boufdache’s nomination is the breadth of the coalition behind it. Other names circulated in the pre-session maneuvering RND secretary-general Miloud Boutine, former wali Attallah Moulati, political science professor Ismail Debache but the presidential-majority parties converged on Boufdache after internal consultations balancing political and organizational weight within the bloc. Opposition parties have entered candidates of their own, Amine Alouch of the Movement of Society for Peace and Rachid Hassani of the RCD, but with the numbers in the chamber decisively stacked toward the majority coalition, their candidacies stand as symbolic contests rather than genuine threats.

What Wednesday’s Vote Would Mean

Should the Assembly confirm her, Boufdache becomes the fourth ranking official in the Algerian state hierarchy, after the President of the Republic, the President of the Council of the Nation, and the Constitutional Court. It would mark the first time in Algeria’s independent history that a woman has presided over the lower house of parliament a chamber that has passed through nine legislative terms under male leadership.

The symbolism carries weight beyond the individual. It arrives even as the last legislative elections produced a smaller female contingent in the Assembly, with only 25 women among 407 deputies. A woman ascending to the chamber’s presidency in that context sends a sharper signal than incremental gains in the deputy count ever could: that leadership in Algeria’s institutions is earned through competence and sustained public service, not conferred by quota.

Wednesday’s session will settle it. If the presidential majority’s consensus holds, Algeria’s Assembly opens its tenth term with a physician turned legislator at its head, and a new benchmark for what a path to the country’s highest offices can look like.

Algeria gate; The crisis that shook Algerian–Malian relations was no passing diplomatic dispute, nor the result of any Algerian interference in Mali’s internal affairs as some have tried to suggest. It emerged instead from a broader effort to push Bamako away from Algeria and weaken coordination channels the two countries had built over decades.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was unequivocal on this point: Algeria “has not and will not interfere” in Mali’s internal affairs, explicitly rejecting attempts by some to frame Algerian support for Bamako as interference. Algeria’s policy toward its neighbors rests on a fixed principle: respect for national sovereignty, and support for political solutions and dialogue particularly in the Sahel, a region facing security challenges that no single state can address alone.

The recent crisis, marked by unprecedented tension in bilateral relations, was not a reflection of any shift in Algerian foreign policy. It was the product of external efforts aimed at isolating Mali from one of its most traditional partners and undermining cooperation mechanisms that had proven their security and diplomatic value for years. This explains why these developments drew such wide attention across the Sahel regional actors understand that no attempt to redraw the balance of relations in the region can bypass Algeria.

Events have borne out this narrative: after months of rupture, relations returned to their normal course in July 2026 with the return of both ambassadors and the reopening of airspace practical proof that the rift between the two countries was externally imposed and temporary, not a strategic choice by either side.