Hommam Al Nassim 
Algeria has expressed reservations about a proposed election mechanism for senior officials of the African Union Commission, which relies on rotating positions according to the division adopted by the Union for the continent into five regions.
Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf said at the meeting of the extraordinary session of the Executive Council of the African Union on Friday that his country has taken note of the trend towards activating the principle of regional rotation for the positions of the President and Vice-President of the Commission, but is reluctant to support this trend, due to fears that this will lead to “limiting the decision and the right to run for office to a specific region, and that it will turn into a dictation by the same region to our entire organization, or at other times turn into a source of tensions and tensions within the region concerned.” by submitting candidacies and counter-candidacies.”
The Algerian minister warned that the adoption of a strict formula to activate the principle of regional rotation “will obscure the principle of multiple options, and open the field of competition between the various visions, projects and ambitious programs that aspire to serve our continental organization without encircling it or confining it to the narrow scope of a region of our continent,” adding that “the process of selecting and electing senior officials in our continental organization has never faced a severe problem, the severity of which dictated the need to address it as presented before us.”
Attaf considered that the adoption of the principle of regional rotation will lead to “detracting from the powers of the Summit of Heads of State and Government in selecting the Commissioners of the Union and senior officials of the Organization, while the selection and election process was governed by the principle of freedom of choice, plurality of candidacies and honest competition between the various sons and daughters of our continent without the slightest distinction, discrimination, or preference between them in view of their countries or regions of affiliation,” noting that the selection of the Commissioners of the Union “must be subject to the criterion of competence and eligibility to lead the executive body of our organization, not for regional affiliation, or the product of dictating a particular region.”
At the next AU summit, a new commissioner for the African Union will be elected after the end of the reign of Chadian Moussa Faki, who has held the post since 2017, as well as a deputy commissioner and six assistants: the Commissioner for Political Affairs, Security and Peace, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Development, the Commissioner for Trade and Economy, the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, the Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, and the Commissioner for Health and Humanitarian Affairs.