The story so far
After weeks of resisting popular demands, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had a tight grip on the country with support from the military and the intelligence establishment for 20 years, on Tuesday submitted his resignation. Since February 22, tens of thousands of people, especially youth, have thronged the cities, including capital Algiers, where protests are legally barred, demanding that the 82-year-old leader go. Mr. Bouteflika’s resignation comes a day after Army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah declared that the President was unfit to continue in office.
His political career
Born in 1937, Mr. Bouteflika’s political career began in the pre-independence years. At age 19, he joined the National Liberation Army, the military wing of the National Liberation Front (FLN) that was fighting the French colonialists for independence. In the post independence government led by revolutionary leader Ahmed Ben Bella, Mr. Bouteflika was a Minister. In 1963, Bella appointed him Foreign Minister, a post which he would hold till 1979. In between, Bella fell in a coup but Mr. Bouteflika survived as he switched his loyalty to Houari Boumédiène, the new President.
After Boumédiène’s death in 1979, Mr. Bouteflika was sidelined along with the other old guard by the new President, Chadli Bendjedid. Faced with charges of corruption, he fled the country and lived in exile for six years. The Army brought him back to the central committee of the ruling party in the late 1980s when Algeria was going through a rough phase amid protests and a surge of Islamist politics. The government introduced some political reforms and held free elections in 1991 in which the Islamic Salvation Front emerged victorious. But the military did not allow the Islamists to capture power. They scrapped the election and appointed a new government, which plunged the country into a bloody civil war.
In 1999, when the country was still going through a violent phase, Mr. Bouteflika won the presidency. He stood as an independent, but with support from the military. His immediate focus was to resolve the civil conflict. He adopted a twin-pronged strategy — issuing amnesty to the lower ranks of the Islamist insurgency while at the same time going after the remains of militants (the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, was the main rebel faction).
In three years, Mr. Bouteflika brought the civil war to an end and his government built a strong welfare state funded by revenues from oil and gas exports. These measures bolstered his popularity and helped him stabilise his regime, often balancing between public demands, military power blocs and the interests of his own clique and family.
A survivor
While Mr. Bouteflika is credited with ending the civil war and stabilising the economy, he was also known for his ruthless administrative style that denied several basic freedom to people. The presidential election was hardly free and fair. There has always been a strong political opposition against him. But Mr. Bouteflika has been a survivor. He survived the 1965 coup against his political mentor and President Bella. He survived the civil war. He survived even the Arab Spring protests of 2010-11 that felled fellow North African dictators Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia.
In 2014, Mr. Bouteflika won a fourth term without inviting much public protest even as he had withdrawn from the public by that time following the previous year’s stroke. But the resentment was gradually rising, particularly amid mounting economic woes following the 2014 commodity meltdown. The oil and gas sector has been the backbone of the country's economy accounting for about 20% of the GDP, and 85% of exports. The fall in commodity prices hit the economy hard. The economic growth slowed from 4% in 2014 to 1.6% in 2017. Youth unemployment stood at 29%.