"Bouteflika has lived all his life around two obsessions: conquering power and keeping it"
President President Abdelaziz Bouteflika votes in the Algerian legislative elections in 2017 (illustration).
AFP / File
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
Former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, walled in silence since 2019 after failing to run for a fifth term under pressure from the streets, died on Friday, September 18 in Algiers, at the age of 84.
Farid Alilat, journalist at
Jeune Afrique
, author of the book
Bouteflika, the secret history
, is the guest of RFI to talk about it.
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RFI: What image will the late president leave Algerians
?
Farid Alilat
: The vast majority of Algerians will retain the image of a president nailed to an armchair. I think that's what will stay with his compatriots for good, because he stayed in power for 20 years so much that he ended up being kicked out. And he was driven out under popular coercion, coerced by millions of Algerians because he wanted to hang on. And it is precisely this obsession that made him lose, a president nailed to a chair. I believe that this is what the Algerians will retain, much more than his record, much more than his political career which is nevertheless exceptional.
And how can we explain that he thus clung to power after his stroke, his stroke of 2013, where we could see it well, he was diminished, he had difficulty honoring the talks with diplomats, foreign heads of state who could come, for example?
Because [Abdelaziz] Bouteflika has lived all his life around two obsessions: the obsession to conquer power and the obsession to keep power. From the age of 20, he thought he was president. Before [Houari] Boumediene's death in 1979, he already had the ambition to succeed him, he did everything to be his successor before being dismissed by the army. When he went into exile, he always had this ambition to come back to power and that's what he did in 1999. And since 1999, since his election, he has done absolutely everything to keep that power, including by changing the Constitution, which limited terms to two. So, first to gain power and then to keep it in spite of common sense, in spite of reason, in spite of his illness. He himself knew he could not exercise power.His clan around him knew that he could not exercise power, because he did not speak, because he could not travel, because he could not meet collaborators, because he could not not working. But despite all this, he wanted to die president and have a national funeral.
Would you say it's a huge mess on arrival? There was still a lot of hope when Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected in 1999 ...
Absolutely, it's a huge waste, because, when he came to power, he had all the cards in hand to make Algeria an emerging country, a country to be developed because he had the support of the army, it had the support of foreign powers. There was money, at that time a barrel of oil was $ 120. Algeria garnered between 50 and 70 billion dollars each year. So he had all the cards in hand to make Algeria an emerging country. How was this money spent? This is the question Algerians are asking themselves. And the big mess which is illustrated by this image of two Prime Ministers of Bouteflika who are in prison, his brother who is in prison, twenty of his ministers are in prison,ten businessmen who constitute the biggest fortunes of the country are today in prison. This is ultimately the reign of Bouteflika, all the men he ruled with are now in prison.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika will have managed to escape justice despite everything?
Yes.
We can say so insofar as he has not been worried by all the corruption cases in which his brother, his two prime ministers and his ministers are involved.
He was not summoned by justice.
It is perhaps one of the biggest regrets not to have seen him in court, even if symbolically, we know that he cannot speak.
He is unable to do so because he is aphasic.
He cannot answer a judge's questions.
But his summons would have been a very strong, very symbolic gesture.
Now we know that will never happen again.
You wrote this book
Bouteflika, the secret history
.
He will remain despite everything one of the great figures of the independence of Algeria?
Yes.
Bouteflika is a fascinating, exceptional character.
I'm talking about his career, his longevity.
He is someone who lived through the Algerian war, who went through 60 years of Algerian history with its faults, its defects, all of that.
He will remain a character who marked the contemporary history of Algeria.
► To read also:
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the long decline of the hero of Algerian independence
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Algeria
Abdelaziz Bouteflika