Algeria: Bouteflika invited to run for a fifth term

The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria reiterated on Saturday its call for a fifth term of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

On April 7, FLN Secretary General Djamel Ould Abbes publicly expressed the “wish” and “desire” of activists to see Mr. Bouteflika “continue his work” after 2019.

“This call to the president aims to guarantee continuity for the security of the country and for the benefit of the rising generation,” he said at a meeting Saturday in Djelfa, 270 km south of Algiers.

“The last word on this subject goes to the president himself,” said the secretary general of the FLN.

On April 15, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia expressed his wish to see Abdelaziz Bouteflika run for a fifth term.

A year after the end of the president’s mandate in April 2019, speculation is rife in Algeria around a new candidacy of Mr. Bouteflika, in power since 1999 and very weakened for five years by the aftermath a stroke.

On April 9, Abdelaziz Bouteflika made a very rare appearance in front of an audience by inaugurating, in a wheelchair, in the center of Algiers, a renovated mosque and two metro stations.

He was elected for a fourth term in 2014, a year after a stroke that took him to the Val-de-Grâce Hospital in Paris, where he had spent more than two months.

Mr. Bouteflika, 81, has been running Algeria for 19 years.

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