Algeria's Bouteflika offers to serve brief term if reelected, protesters defiant

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, facing mass protests over his 20 years in power, will run in April’s elections, his campaign manager said on Sunday, with Ennahar TV saying he had offered to step down after a year if re-elected.

The announcement read out by Abdelghani Zaalane on Bouteflika’s behalf said the president pledged to organise an early election, with Ennahar TV saying that would be held within a year.

The comments are likely to be viewed as an attempt to appease those who had taken to the streets for 10 days to protest against the 82-year-old’s plans to remain in office and to allow him an exit on his own terms.

But hours after his comments, new anti-government protests broke out late at night in the capital and other cities drawing in thousands, according to witnesses and TV footage.

Several hundreds of mainly young men marched through Algiers’ centre where riot police were blocking some roads. The protests appeared to be mostly peaceful.

Bouteflika’s statement was his first since protests broke out 10 days ago, the biggest in Algeria since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that unseated rulers in neighbouring countries.

In a sign of a disconnect from the mostly young population, almost 70 percent of whom are aged below 30, he communicated via letter, as he has since suffering a stroke in 2013.

Tens of thousands of protesters had been rallying throughout the day in cities around Algeria, calling on Bouteflika not to submit election papers for the April 18 polls, the deadline for which was Sunday.

Zaalane arrived to submit the documents on Sunday evening, but there was no sign of Bouteflika, who Swiss television said remained at a hospital in Geneva.

“I listened and heard the passionate call from the protesters, especially the thousands of young people,” Bouteflika wrote, repeating a pledge to hold a referendum on constitutional reform.

There was no immediate response from protesters, who had dispersed by the time the letter was published in the evening.

Just before Bouteflika’s announcement, the head of the election commission, Abdelwahab Derbal, said all candidates must submit their candidacy papers in person. If applied, that would mean Bouteflika could not run.

Bouteflika’s opponents say he is no longer fit to lead, citing his health and what they call chronic corruption and a lack of economic reforms to tackle high unemployment, which exceeds 25 percent among people under 30.

Analysts say the protesters lack leadership and organisation in a country still dominated by veterans of the 1954-1962 independence war against France, including Bouteflika.

But traditionally weak and divided opposition and civic groups have called for protests to go on should Bouteflika continue to pursue re-election.

The government has played on fears among many Algerians of a return of bloodshed seen in the 1990s, when an estimated 200,000 people were killed after Islamists took up arms when the military cancelled elections they were poised to win.

But the new series of protests has been generally peaceful, apart from scuffles with police on Friday, leaving 183 people injured.

Students gathered in their thousands on Sunday at university faculties, one of them near the Constitutional Council. Students chanted: “No to a fifth term!”

NIGHT PROTESTS

Thousands later marched through the city centre. A diplomatic source estimated that as many as 70,000 people had massed in Algiers, including a rally at Bab Ezzouar university, the country’s biggest.

“We will not stop until we get rid of this system,” said Aicha, a 23-year-old student, who declined to give her full name.

There were also protests in cities such as Oran, Constantine and Skikda during the day, some cities of which saw new demonstrations at night. Some 6,000 also protested in Paris, where many Algerians live.

By Sunday evening, seven candidates had registered to run against Bouteflika. Opposition groups failed to agree on one candidate, making any campaign an uphill challenge in a country dominated by one party – the FLN – since independence.

Many Algerians eschewed public political activity for years, for fear of trouble from the pervasive security apparatus or out of disillusionment with the lack of change in the leadership.

After the decade-long Islamist insurgency that Bouteflika crushed early in his rule, Algerians generally tolerated a political system leaving little room for dissent as a price to pay for relative peace and stability.

REUTERS