Analysis: Algeria’s leader has fallen from grace
By Siobhán O'Grady Siobhán O'Grady WorldViews reporter Email Bio Follow April 4 at 12:59 AM Want smart analysis of the most important news in your inbox every weekday, along with other global reads, interesting ideas and opinions to know? Sign up for the Today’s WorldView newsletter.
“Sometimes, history has a sense of humor,” said Dalia Ghanem, an Algerian political analyst and resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Bouteflika was a member of Algeria’s first constitutional assembly and served as a delegate in the country’s first and second legislative bodies. In 1962, he was appointed minister of youth, sports and tourism, and then promoted to foreign minister less than a year later.
But he fell from grace following Boumédiène’s death in 1978. He was once thought to be Boumédiène’s natural successor as president, but the military backed Defense Minister Chadli Bendjedid. After Bouteflika became mired in a corruption scandal — charges he claimed were political — he went into self-imposed exile in 1981.
Ghanem, the political analyst, told Today’s Worldview that the country was immensely scarred by the brutality of the conflict. Bouteflika, she said, “was the architect of peace, but also the president who brought back Algeria to the international arena after more than 10 years of total diplomatic isolation. And for that, Algerians loved him.”In 2004, he was elected to a second term, winning 85 percent of the vote.
The aging Bouteflika began to disappear from public life after suffering a stroke, but he clung to power. Observers were acutely aware that Bouteflika’s inner circle was helping to run the show — and earlier this year, when he announced he would seek a fifth term in office, many Algerians felt they had seen enough.
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