Algeria’s ailing 82-year-old President Bouteflika drops bid for fifth term amid mass protests
- Celebrations erupt on the streets of the Algerian capital as the news spread
- Some critics worry he intends to hold on to power
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Algeria’s ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced he was dropping his bid for a fifth term in office, scrapping the upcoming elections altogether after weeks of protests against his candidacy.
“Peacefully, we have overthrown the puppet!” people sang in Algiers following the president’s decision Monday.
Celebratory honking of car horns rang out in the city centre, as Algerians waved their national flags on streets deserted by police.
“There will not be a fifth term” and “there will be no presidential election on April 18,” Bouteflika announced in a message carried by the official APS news agency.
The 82-year-old said he was responding to “a pressing demand that you have been numerous in making to me”.
Demonstrations against Bouteflika’s bid for another term have brought tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets for each of the last three Fridays, with smaller demonstrations taking place on other days.
The president vowed “to hand over the duties and prerogatives of the president of the republic to the successor freely chosen by the Algerian people,” but gave no date for new elections.
In a broader political shake-up, interior minister Noureddine Bedoui replaced the unpopular Ahmed Ouyahia as prime minister and has been tasked with forming a new government, according to APS.
And the country’s new deputy prime minister Ramtane Lamamra in an interview with RFI radio said the next elections would be “absolutely free” and called on all Algerians in the face of this “historic responsibility” to work together “for a better future”.
Pressure mounts on Algeria’s ailing President Bouteflika as protesters mount biggest threat to his 20-year rule
Bouteflika, whose rare public appearances since he suffered a stroke in 2013 have been in a wheelchair, returned to Algeria on Sunday after spending two weeks at a hospital in Switzerland.
Former colonial power France on Monday welcomed the president’s decision to not stand for a fifth term.
No sooner had Bouteflika made his announcements, than some accused him of using the election delay to extend his term by stealth.
“Bouteflika wants an indirect extension of his mandate,” ran a headline on the independent news portal Maghreb Emergent
His return from hospital in Geneva came as protest strikes Sunday shut down the capital’s public transport system and many schools across Algeria.
The president had left Algeria on February 24 for what the presidency described as “routine medical checks”.
Since the breakout of protests last month, Algeria’s army chief, Ahmed Gaid Salah, has pledged to guarantee national security and criticised those he said want to return to the “painful years” of the civil war of the 1990s.
Bouteflika became president in 1999, and he has clung on to power despite his ill health.
When the Arab spring uprisings erupted across the Middle East and North Africa, Bouteflika’s regime smothered dissent and played on fears of a repeat of Algeria’s civil war.
His government lifted a 19-year state of emergency, granted pay rises and announced piecemeal political reforms.
But those reforms, announced in “a climate of fear”, were shelved once the situation was brought under control, a European diplomat said.
Little by little, Bouteflika returned the regime to its authoritarian ways.
He was elected for a fourth term in April 2014 with 81.5 per cent of the vote, despite not campaigning.
Bouteflika has a history of medical problems and has often flown to France or Switzerland for treatment.
