Young Algerians say Bouteflika win dashes hopes for change

ALGIERS — A day after Algeria’s ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika won a fourth term, many young people in the oil-rich nation wonder if the next generation will ever have a chance to rule.

Results announced on Friday by Interior Minister Tayeb Belaiz showed that Bouteflika, 77, won 81.53 per cent of the votes in an election marred by low turnout and opposition claims of fraud.

His landslide came despite him not even campaigning in person for polling day on Thursday, when he made his first public appearance since May 2012 to vote from a wheelchair.

“Bouteflika is obsessed by the desire to rule. His generation will never agree to pull back and make room for younger people,” said Kamel, a 36-year-old opposition MP.

“His promise to pass the torch [to the next generation] is nothing but hot air,” he added.

Bouteflika’s campaign manager Abdelmalek Sellal told AFP before the vote that the president was determined to see young people play a more efficient role in the nation’s affairs.

Algeria has a population of around 38.5 million people, three quarters of whom are younger than 35, and yet the key leaders in Africa’s largest country are in their 70s.

Although Bouteflika remains very popular with many Algerians for helping to end a devastating civil war in the 1990s, many others have been clamouring for change.

High youth unemployment — 21.5 per cent of under 35s are jobless, according to the International Monetary Fund — widespread corruption and sectarian unrest have all been used as arguments by youths and the opposition to demand change.

Bouteflika’s main rival in the election, Ali Benflis, received just 12.18 per cent of the votes and has alleged fraud.

On Saturday, the 69-year-old said he will set up a new party in which young people will play a key role.

“Youths will have a major role in this project and in the future direction of the party,” an aide, Lotfi Boumghar, told AFP.

 ‘Hostage to continuity’ 

Analysts have warned of rising instability in Algeria over social problems and the government’s failure to address them.

They have also voiced fears that things will stagnate in Algeria because Bouteflika’s ill health means his cronies will continue to run the show.

“It is clear that Bouteflika’s re-election cements continuity” in Algeria, said analyst Rachid Grim.

Analyst Rachid Tlemcani agreed, adding: “Bouteflika is ill and cannot run the country. After his re-election, Algeria will be in the hands of the clan that took it hostage” in April 2013.

He was referring to Bouteflika suffering a mini-stroke last year when he had to be rushed to hospital in France and spent three months there before returning home.

But analysts have also said that Bouteflika must make good on his campaign promise of “a broad democracy” in which citizens take an active part.

The president “must revise the constitution”, said Tlemcani.

Zahia, 34, a doctor in a state-run hospital, said it will be a long time before the policies of the Bouteflika camp can be uprooted.

“There is no hope that the system which has been in place since independence [from France in 1962] will change during one term,” she said.

“It will take a long time to uproot it. Change should have started with the election of a man who is not so old and enjoys all his physical abilities. Bouteflika is old and ill.”

The Bouteflika camp is adamant that he will bring prosperity to Algeria during his fourth five-year term.

“He has moved Algeria to seventh heaven, eighth heaven even,” the interior minister said Friday after announcing Bouteflika’s victory.

Sellal, the former prime minister who resigned to run Bouteflika’s campaign, repeatedly called Bouteflika “a gift from God” who steered the country out of “darkness and into the light”.

Oran newspaper lamented on Saturday: “Bouteflika-ism has won” and “we lost the chance for a transition... we pushed back the future”.