Algeria: Abdelaziz Bouteflika died at the age of 84
Sky world news / Algeria The ex-president breathed his last on Friday, national television said, quoting a statement from the presidency.
He had ruled the country for twenty years, from 1999 to 2019.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was President of Algeria for twenty years, died on Friday, September 17, at the age of 84.
The date of his burial has not been announced.
Omnipresent in Algerian political life for decades, but become almost invisible since a stroke in 2013, Mr. Bouteflika had given no sign of life since the popular protest movement of Hirak and the army l 'forced him to resign in April 2019.
He remained entrenched in the solitude of his nursing home in Zéralda, west of Algiers.
Since his stroke, which made him aphasic and confined him to a wheelchair, Bouteflika had been the subject of constant rumors about his health and even his death.
But, each time, he reappeared in public to deny them.
More than thirty-five years after his first ministerial post, Bouteflika took over Algeria in 1999, wearing the image of a savior in a country torn by civil war.
Twenty years later, he was driven out without consideration by the army, pillar of the regime, under the pressure of an unprecedented protest movement, the Hirak.
Summoned to leave power by the general staff, "Boutef", as his compatriots colloquially call him, threw in the towel on April 2, 2019, after an unlikely attempt to run for a fifth term.
This candidacy was seen as too much humiliation by millions of Algerians, often young and wrongly described as resigned. While Abdelaziz Bouteflika was first elected in 1999, then constantly re-elected in the first round with over 80% of the vote in 2004, 2009 and 2014, this fifth term seemed acquired in the eyes of the regime.
But six weeks of massive Hirak mobilization pushes the army boss, General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, one of his loyalists, to get his resignation. Until the end, Abdelaziz Bouteflika will have wanted to hang on, defying the obvious: the one who was at 26years ago the youngest foreign minister in the world reflected only the image of a silent old man reclusive in his palace.
A stark contrast to the beginning of his presidency, when this handsome talker with clear eyes and a three-piece suit, cigar lover, showed himself as a hyperactive leader.
"I am the whole of Algeria," said on coming to power the one whose destiny merges with the contemporary history of his country.
