President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Thursday issued a decree setting June 12 for early legislative elections, after dissolving parliament last month. Thousands demonstrated in Algiers on Friday, rejecting the early legislative elections announced the day before, as weekly rallies by the resurgent Hirak pro-democracy movement gain momentum. "To safeguard itself, the system says: legislative (elections)," one poster read Friday. Protesters defied a coronavirus-related ban on gatherings to rally from different parts of the capital, converging on the central post office, the Hirak movement's emblematic rallying point, AFP correspondents said. Demonstrators shouted slogans including "No elections with mafia gangs" and "a civil not a military state", a key Hirak slogan.