Abdelaziz Bouteflika

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Abdelaziz Bouteflika (born 2 March 1937) is an Algerian politician who served as President of Algeria from 1999 to 2019. He presided over the conclusion of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002 (previous president), and he declared emergency rule in February 2011 amid widespread regional unrest.

He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1963 to 1979, then President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1974 to 1974. Bouteflika resigned on April 2nd, 2019 after months of mass demonstrations.

Algeria's longest-serving head of state, with nearly 20 years in office.

Early life and education

Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born in Oujda, French Morocco, on March 2nd. He was the son of Mansouria Ghezlaoui and Ahmed Bouteflika, both from Tlemcen, Algeria. He had three half-sisters (Fatima, Yamina, and Acha), four brothers (Abdelghani, Mustapha, Abderahim, and Sad), and a fourth (Latifa). Sad Bouteflika, 20 years his junior, would later be appointed special advisor to his brother in 1999. Unlike Sad, who was mainly raised in Tlemcen, Abdelaziz grew up in Oujda, where his father immigrated as a youngster. He was well-versed in the Qur'an, and he was the son of a zaouia sheikh. He attended three schools in Oudja, including Sidi Ziane, El Hoceinia, and Abdel Moumen High School, where he reportedly excelled academically. He was also affiliated with Qadiriya Zaouia in Oujda.

In 1956, Bouteflika moved to Ouled Amer near Tlemcen, where he later joined the National Liberation Army, which was a military branch of the National Liberation Front. He obtained his military education at the École des Cadres in Dar El Kebdani, Morocco. He was named a controller of Wilaya V in 1957-1958, but later became the administrative secretary of Houari Boumédiène. He became one of his closest collaborators and a core member of his Oujda Group. 12 He was sent in 1960 to lead the Malian Front in Algeria's south and became known for his Abdelkader al-Mali, which has survived until today. He united with Boumédienne and the border armies in support of Ahmed Ben Bella's Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic in 1962, at the outbreak of independence.

Personal life and death

Bouteflika was admitted to a French hospital in November 2005, suffering from a gastric ulcer hemorrhage, and was released three weeks later. However, the fact that Bouteflika remained virtually incommunicado contributed to rumors that he was seriously ill with stomach cancer. In April 2006, he checked into the hospital for the second time.

Bouteflika had stomach cancer by the time of 2008, according to a leaked diplomatic cable.

Bouteflika suffered from a debilitating stroke in 2013. Hichem Aboud, a journalist, was pursued for "thorough integrity, and consistent administration of the Republic's agencies" and had characterized Sad Bouteflika as the puppet-master in charge of the administration.

Bouteflika died in Zéralda at the age of 84 at the age of 84. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune's death was announced on state television. Since suffering from a stroke in 2013, he had been in poor health. Following his death, President Tebboune declared three days of national mourning. Cuba declared September 21 as the day of national mourning, with the flags half-masted. In a subpoena service, he was buried at El Alia Cemetery on September 19th.

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Career

Bouteflika, the deputy for Tlemcen in the Constituent Assembly and Minister for Youth and Sport in the government led by Ahmed Ben Bella, was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1962, the following year.

He was a prime mover in the military coup led by Houari Boumediene that overthrew Ben Bella on 19 June 1965. Bouteflika served as Minister of Foreign Affairs until President Bouchéflika's death in 1978.

He served as president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 and 1975, making him the youngest person to have done so. Algerian President Jacques Dahomet was a leader of the Non-Aligned Nations Movement at the time. In the first talks between the US and Algerian officials after the resuming of diplomatic relations between the two countries, he had meetings with Henry Kissinger.

He was charged in 1981 with embebbing the money of Algerian embassies between 1965 and 1979. Bouteflika was found guilty of fraudulently obtaining 60 million dinars during his diplomatic career on August 8, 1983. President Chadli Bendjedid granted amnesty to Bouteflika, and his coworkers, Senouci and Boudjakdji, were jailed. Bouteflika's diplomatic passport, a villa where he used to live but didn't own, was returned to him after the amnesty, and all of his debt was cleared. He never paid back the money "he saved for the building of a new foreign affairs ministry."

Bouteflika was one of the two leading candidates for the role as the president following Boumédienne's unexpected death in 1978. Bouteflika had been thought to be the party's "right wing" that was more open to economic growth and West rapprochement. Colonel Mohamed Salah Yahiaoui of Tunisia represented the "bouboumédiennist" left wing. The military selected senior army colonel Chadli Bendjedid as a compromise candidate in the end. Bouteflika was recalled as the Minister of State, but the old guard was eventually discredited as Bendjedid's "de-Boumédiennization" mistook him.

Since the country had entered a difficult period of instability and disorganized attempts at reform, the army brought him back to the Central Committee of the FLN in 1989, with power fights between Bendjedid and a group of army generals paralysing decision-making.

The reform process came to an end in 1992 when the army took power and called off elections that were about to bring the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front to power. This started a civil war that would last through the 1990s. Bouteflika remained on the sidelines during this period, with little presence in the media and no political role. Bouteflika was reported to have turned down the Army's bid to replace him assassinated president Mohamed Boudiaf, but later that it was because the army did not have absolute power over the armed forces. Rather, GM Liamine Zéroual assumed president.

Bouteflika ran for president as an independent candidate, aided by the military in 1999, after Zéroual unexpectedly stepped down and declared early elections. All other candidates withdrew from the election straight ahead of the primary, citing fraud risks. After the unsuccessful election, Bouteflika held a referendum on his plans to restore peace and stability to Algeria (involving amnesties for Islamist rebels) and to put to the test his countrymen. He secured 81% of the vote, but opponents also challenged him.

In 2000, Bouteflika presided over the Organisation of African Unity, signed the Algiers Peace Treaty between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and funded peace efforts in the African Great Lakes area. On a state visit to Algiers in 2003, he secured a friendship treaty with nearby Spain in 2002 and welcomed President Jacques Chirac of France. This was supposed to be a precursor to the ratification of a friendship treaty.

Algeria has been particularly involved in African relations, and in escalating trade with the West, as well as attempting to resurrect its role in the defunct non-Aligned movement. However, it has only played a more limited role in Arab politics, in the country's other traditional area of concern. Despite some hopes for a thaw in 1999, the year of King Mohamed VI's accession to the throne in Morocco, relations with the Kingdom of Morocco remained tense, with diplomatic disputes on the subject of the Western Sahara.

Bouteflika was re-elected by an unexpectedly large 85% of the population in an election that was deemed by Western observers as a free and fair election on April 8, 2004. Ali Benflis, his competitor and former chief of staff, challenged him in this contest. Several publications said that the election had not been fair. Over extensive state control over the broadcast media, widespread frustration was voiced. Bouteflika's extending hold over the state had been widely seen as a result, with General Mohammed Lamari being forced to resign as his head of staff and replacing him "with Ahmed Salah Gaid, his close friend and ally."

Only 17% of people in Kabylia voted in 2004, which was a dramatic rise over the 2002 violence-ridden legislative elections. The registered turnout rate was 59% nationally.

Bouteflika held a referendum on his "Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation," influenced by the 1995 "Sant'Egidio Platform" paper. One of Bouteflika's objectives in promoting this blanket amnesty initiative was to help Algeria regain its reputation internationally and guarantee access to institutional actors, according to the law establishing the referendum.

The Complementary Plan for Economic Growth Support (PCSC), which called for the building of 1 million housing units, the construction of the new Algiers subway project, the completion of the Algiers subway project, and other large-scale infrastructure projects, was carried out in the first year of Bouteflika's second term.

Over the five-year cycle, the PCSC invested $60 billion. Bouteflika also set out to bring down the external debt from $21 billion to $12 billion at the same time. Despite initial resistance from the workers unions, he gained the reform of the law governing the oil and gas industries from Parliament. However, Bouteflika pushed back from this position and accepted revisions to the hydrocarbon law in 2006, which called for watering down some of the provisions of the 2005 law relating to Sonatrach, the state-owned oil & gas company, in new developments.

During Bouteflika's second term, he was highly critical of the law — passed after the 2005 French revolutions — insisting that French history school textbooks teach that French colonization had positive results in the region, particularly in North Africa. The diplomatic crisis that ensued delayed the signing of a friendship agreement between the two countries.

If Algeria began buying arms and gave Russian gas companies (Gazprom, Itera, and Lukoil) access to joint fossil-fuel ventures in Algeria, ties to Russia were strengthened and Russia promised to forgive debts, if Algeria started buying arms and give Russian gas firms (Gazprom, Itera, and Lukoil) access to joint fossil-fuel ventures in Algeria.

Bouteflika arranged the Arab League Summit and became President of the Arab League for one year in 2004, but his calls for reform of the League did not receive enough funding to pass during the Algiers summit.

"The Israelis' continuing killing and refusal of a lasting and stable peace, which the Arab world is calling for, requires us to fully support the Palestinian people." Despite widespread west, specifically the United States, Bouteflika insisted that Arab nations would reform at their own pace.

On the sidelines of the 15th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Egypt, Vietnam's President, N. Minh Tritt, met with Bouteflika on July 16, 2009. President Triet and Bouteflika also agreed that the two countries still have a lot of potential for growth in political and trade relations. Triet lauded Algeria's government for enabling the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group to invest in oil discovery and exploitation in Algeria.

The Arab League's foreign ministers voted to declare Hezbollah as a terrorist group in March 2016. Bouteflika voted with Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq against the resolution in March 2016.

A major worry of Bouteflika's Algeria had been on-and-off Tuareg rebellions in northern Mali, a narcotic. Algeria has proclaimed itself as a mediator in the conflict, despite possibly undermining its increasing regional importance. Both Algiers mediated peace deals in 2007 and 2008.

Bouteflika appointed Abdelaziz Belkhadem as the country's new Prime Minister in 2006. Belkhadem later revealed proposals that breached the Algerian Constitution to allow the President to run for office indefinitely and raise his powers. This was widely believed to have been designed to encourage Bouteflika to run for president for a third term. Belkhadem was forced out of the premiership in 2008, and his predecessor, Ahmed Ouyahia, was recalled, having also come out in favour of the constitutional amendment.

The Council of Ministers announced on November 3, 2008, that the new constitutional reform bill would abolish the presidential term limit that had been embedded in Article 74. The People's National Assembly supported the removal of the term limit on November 12, 2008; only the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) opposed its removal.

Following the constitutional amendment that allowed him to run for a third term, Bouteflika declared his candidacy in the 2009 presidential election as an outsider. Bouteflika gained the election with 90.2 percent of the vote, on a turnout of 74%, ensuring a new five-year term. Several opposition parties had postponed the referendum, with the opposition Socialist Forces Front citing a "tsunami of significant fraud" as the cause.

Journalists in 2010 gathered to protest press freedom and condemn Bouteflika's self-appointed position as editor-in-chief of Algeria's state television station. The state of emergency was repealed by the government in February 2011, but protesters and protesters were still barred from attending protest rallies and protests. However, over 2,000 protesters defied an official ban in April 2011 and took to the streets of Algiers, clashing with police officers. The new Egyptian Revolution had inspired the creators, and Algeria was a police state and "corrupt to the bone," according to the activists.

Following yet another constitutional amendment that allowed him to run for a fourth term, Bouteflika declared that he would run for a fourth term. He was subjected to a federal law requiring a candidate to obtain over 60,000 signatures from supporters in 25 provinces. He was re-elected with 81% of the vote on 18 April 2014, while Benflis came in second with 11.8 percent. The turnout was 57%, down from the 79 percent of 2009 figures. Several opposition parties resigned from the election, prompting accusations of fraud.

On 19 April 2014, Bouteflika sent his congratulations to newly elected Bashar al-Assad. In November 2014, Bouteflika was admitted to a clinic in Grenoble, France. He was hospitalized in France in November 2016 for medical examinations.

On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cancelled her flight to Algeria an hour before takeoff, reportedly because Bouteflika had severe bronchitis.

Bouteflika made a rare and brief appearance on Algerian state television in June 2017 during a cabinet meeting with his new government. In a written statement, he asked the government to minimize imports, reduce spending, and be suspicious of foreign debt. He called for a reform of the banking sector and increased investment in renewable energy and "unconventional fossil hydrocarbons." Following his stroke, Bouteflika was dependent on a wheelchair and had not given a public speaking out since 2014 due to aphasia. He made his final public appearance in Algiers when unveiling a new metro station and the newly renovated Ketchaoua Mosque.

Bouteflika's final term as president was not seen in public for more than two years, and several of his closest associates said he hadn't seen him for more than a year. It was alleged that he could barely speak and wrote by letter with his ministers.

A press release from Bouteflika's long-serving Bouteflika announcing that he will seek his fifth term in a row sparked widespread dissatisfaction on February 10, 2019. In the days before the national protests on February 22nd, youth demonstrators in Kenchela and Annaba demanded that his picture be barred from public halls, arranged via social media. Those in Algiers, where street demonstrations are unlawful, were the largest in nearly 18 years. Prosecutors cut down a massive poster of Bouteflika from the magnificent Algiers central post office.

Bouteflika declared on March 11 that he did not seek a new term after continued demonstrations. However, his withdrawal from the polls was not enough to put an end to the riots. Bouteflika and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, who had been in power 20 days earlier, established a 27-member cabinet with only 6 of the appointees retained from the previous administration's outgoing president's deposed list on March 31. Bouteflika resigned by the end of April 19, the next day. Acceding to demands from the army chief of staff, he resigned a day later, on April 2, 2019.

Following his resignation, Bouteflika revived his reclusiveness and made no public appearances due to his poor health. Bouteflika spent his remaining years in Zéralda, a suburb of Algiers, in a medically induced state residence. He had a private residence in El Biar as well.

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