But he has not resigned. Protesters fear the regime is stalling for time
THE MAN who does not speak finally listened. On March 11th Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, announced that he would not run for a fifth term. That has been the demand of tens of thousands of Algerian protesters over the past two weeks. Mr Bouteflika, 82, has ruled for 20 years. A stroke in 2013 left him confined to a wheelchair; he has rarely spoken in public since. Yet he was to be the only real candidate in an election scheduled for April 18th.
Not right away, though. With the president incapacitated, a clique of generals and businessmen, known as, runs the country. The letter proposed a “transitional period”, with a national convention to draft a new constitution and which would be put to a public vote. There is talk of Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran diplomat and former United Nations special envoy, heading the effort . Elections will follow. The timetable for all this is vague, however.
Algeria’s leaders had thought the country immune to such unrest because of the memory of a bloody civil war in the 1990s. The protests, Algeria’s largest in decades, took the regime by surprise. Employees of the vital state-run oil and gas companies went on strike. More than 1,000 judges refused to supervise the vote if Mr Bouteflika was on the ballot. Even some of the president’s business allies urged him to stand down.
They also fear their victory was incomplete. “Leave means leave” quickly became a popular slogan on social media. Ali Dilem, an Algerian cartoonist, drew a caricature of Mr Bouteflika announcing he would not pursue a fifth term. “Instead I’ll do a fourth term of ten years,” the president says. Protest leaders plan to call another one on March 15th.
It is unclear what further concessions the government can offer. Algerians are unhappy about a sluggish economy and 11% unemployment. But the government has spent half of its foreign reserves since 2013 and low oil prices leave it little room to manoeuvre. The unpopular prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, who warned protesters they would drag the country into a Syrian-style civil war, has resigned. Mr Ouyahia’s replacement and his new deputy are both former ministers and loyalists.
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