Bouteflika, Abdelaziz
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Abdelaziz Bouteflika (b. March 2, 1937, Oujda, French Morocco - d. September 17, 2021, Zenaida, Algeria) was an Algerian politician who served as President of Algeria for almost 20 years, from 1999 to his resignation in 2019.
Bouteflika served during the Algerian War as a member of the National Liberation Front. After Algeria gained its independence from France, Bouteflika served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1963 until 1979. He served as President of the United Nations General Assembly during the 1974–1975 session.
In 1999, Bouteflika was elected President of Algeria in a landslide victory. He would win re-election in 2004, 2009, and 2014. As President, he presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002 when he took over the project of his immediate predecessor President Liamine Zeroual, and he ended emergency rule in February 2011 amidst regional unrest.
Following a stroke in 2013, Bouteflika had made few public appearances throughout his fourth term, making his final appearance in 2017.
Bouteflika resigned on April 2, 2019 after months of mass protests. With nearly 20 years in power, he is the longest-serving head of state of Algeria to date. Following his resignation, Bouteflika became a recluse and died on September 17, 2021.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born on March 2, 1937 in Oujda, French Morocco. He was the son of Mansouria Ghezlaoui and Ahmed Bouteflika from Tlemcen, Algeria. He had three half-sisters (Fatima, Yamina, and Aicha), as well as four brothers (Abdelghani, Mustapha, Abderahim and Said) and one sister (Latifa). Said Bouteflika, 20 years Abdelaziz's junior, would be appointed special counselor to his brother in 1999. Unlike Saïd, who was raised mostly in Tlemcen, Abdelaziz grew up in Oujda, where his father had emigrated as a youngster.
The son of a zaouia (zawiya, a Muslim religious school) sheikh, Bouteflika was well-versed in the Qur'an. He successively attended three schools in Oudja: Sidi Ziane, El Hoceinia, and Abdel Moumen High Schools, where he excelled academically. He was also affiliated with Qadiriyya Zaouia Qin Oujda.
In 1956, Bouteflika went to the village of Ouled Amer near Tlemcen and subsequently joined—at the age of 19—the National Liberation Army, which was a military branch of the National Liberation Front. He received his military education at the École des Cadres in Dar El Kebdani, Morocco.
In 1957–1958, Bouteflika was designated a controller of Wilaya V, making reports on the conditions at the Moroccan border and in west Algeria, but later became the administrative secretary of Houari Boumediene. Bouteflika became one of Boumediene's closest collaborators and a core member of Boumediene's Oujda Group.
In 1960, Bouteflika was assigned to leading the Malian Front in the Algerian south and became known for his nom de guerre of Abdelkader al-Mali, which survived until today. In 1962, at the arrival of independence, Bouteflika aligned with Boumédienne and the border armies in support of Ahmed Ben Bella against the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic.
After independence in 1962, Bouteflika became deputy for Tlemcen in the Constituent Assembly and Minister for Youth and Sport in the government led by Ahmed Ben Bella. The following year, he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Bouteflika was later a prime mover in the military coup led by Houari Boumediene that overthrew Ben Bella on June 19, 1965. Bouteflika continued as Minister for Foreign Affairs until the death of President Boumédienne in 1978.
Bouteflika also served as president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 and of the seventh special session in 1975, becoming the youngest person to do so. Algeria at this time was a leader of the Non-Aligned nations movement. Bouteflika had discussions there with Henry Kissinger in the first talks between United States and Algerian officials since the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
In 1981, Bouteflika was charged with having stolen Algerian embassies' money between 1965 and 1979. On August 8, 1983, Bouteflika was convicted by the Court of Financial Auditors and found guilty of having fraudulently taken 60 million dinars during his diplomatic career. Bouteflika was granted amnesty by President Chadli Bendjedid, however, his colleagues Senouci and Boudjakdji were jailed.
After being granted amnesty, Bouteflika was given back his diplomatic passport. He also was given a villa where he once lived but did not own and had all his debt erased. Bouteflika never paid back the money he had "reserved for a new foreign affairs ministry's building".
Following Boumédienne's unexpected death in 1978, Bouteflika was seen as one of the two main candidates to succeed the powerful president. Bouteflika was thought to represent the party's "right wing" that was more open to economic reform and rapprochement with the West. Colonel Mohamed Salah Yahiaoui represented the "boumédiennist" left wing. In the end, the military opted for a compromise candidate, the senior army colonel Chadli Bendjedid. Bouteflika was reassigned the role of Minister of State, but successively lost power as Bendjedid's policies of "de-Boumédiennisation" marginalized the old guard.
After six years abroad, the army brought Bouteflika back to the Central Committee of the FLN in 1989, after the country had entered a troubled period of unrest and disorganized attempts at reform, with power-struggles between Bendjedid and a group of army generals paralyzing decision-making. In 1992, the reform process ended abruptly when the army took power and scrapped elections that were about to bring the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front to power. This triggered a civil war that would last throughout the 1990s. During this period, Bouteflika stayed on the sidelines, with little presence in the media and no political role. In January 1994, Bouteflika was said to have refused the Army's request that he succeed the assassinated president, Mohamed Boudiaf. Bouteflika claimed later that this was because the army would not grant him full control over the armed forces. Instead, General Liamine Zeroual became President.
In 1999, after Zéroual unexpectedly stepped down and announced early elections. Bouteflika successfully ran for president as an independent candidate, supported by the military. All other candidates withdrew from the election immediately prior to the vote, citing fraud concerns. Bouteflika subsequently organized a referendum on his policies to restore peace and security to Algeria (involving amnesties for Islamist guerrillas) and to test his support among his countrymen after the contested election. He won with 81% of the vote, but this figure was also disputed by opponents.
Bouteflika presided over the African Union in 2000, secured the Algiers Peace Treaty between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and supported peace efforts in the African Great Lakes region. He also secured a friendship treaty with nearby Spain in 2002, and welcomed President Chirac of France on a state visit to Algiers in 2003. This was intended as a prelude to the signature of a friendship treaty.
Algeria was particularly active in African relations, and in mending ties with the West, as well as trying to some extent to resurrect its role in the declining non-Aligned movement. However, it played a more limited role in Arab politics, its other traditional sphere of interest. Relations with the Kingdom of Morocco remained quite tense, with diplomatic clashes on the issue of the Western Sahara, despite some expectations of a thaw in 1999, which was also the year of Mohamed VI's accession to the throne in Morocco.
On April 8, 2004, Bouteflika was re-elected by an unexpectedly high 85% of the vote in an election that was accepted by Western observers as a free and fair election. This was contested by his rival and former chief of staff Ali Benflis. Several newspapers alleged that the election had not been fair. Frustration was expressed over extensive state control over the broadcast media. The electoral victory was widely seen as a confirmation of Bouteflika's strengthening control over the state, cemented through forcing General Mohammed Lamari to resign as his chief of staff and replacing him with Ahmed Salah Gaid, his close friend and ally.
Only 17% of people in Kabylia voted in 2004, which represented a significant increase over the violence-ridden legislative elections of 2002. Country-wide, the registered turnout rate was 59%.
During the first year of his second term, Bouteflika held a referendum on his "Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation", inspired by the 1995 "Sant'Egidio Platform" document. The law born of the referendum showed that one of Bouteflika's goals in promoting this blanket amnesty plan was to help Algeria recover its image internationally and to guarantee immunity to institutional actors.
The first year of Bouteflika's second term implemented the Complementary Plan for Economic Growth Support (PCSC), which aimed for the construction of 1 million housing units, the creation of 2 million jobs, the completion of the East-West highway, the completion of the Algiers subway project, the delivery of the new Algiers airport, and other similar large scale infrastructure projects.
The PCSC totaled $60 billion of spending over the five-year period. Bouteflika also aimed to bring down the external debt from $21 billion to $12 billion in the same time. He also obtained from Parliament the reform of the law governing the oil and gas industries, despite initial opposition from the workers unions. However, Bouteflika stepped back from this position, supporting amendments to the hydrocarbon law in 2006, which propose watering down some of the clauses of the 2005 legislation relating to the role of Sonatrach, the state owned oil and gas company, in new developments.
During Bouteflika's second term he was sharply critical of the law — passed after the 2005 French riots — ordering French history school books to teach that French colonization had positive effects abroad, especially in North Africa. The diplomatic crisis which ensued delayed the signing of a friendship treaty between the two countries.
Ties to Russia were strengthened and Russia agreed to forgive debts if Algeria began buying arms and gave Russian gas companies (Gazprom, Itera, and Lukoil) access to joint fossil-fuel ventures in Algeria.
In 2004 Bouteflika organized the Arab League Summit and became President of the Arab League for one year. However, his calls for reform of the League did not gain sufficient support to pass during the Algiers summit.
At the March 2005 meeting of Arab leaders, held in Algiers, Bouteflika spoke out strongly against Israel, "The Israelis' continuous killing and refusal of a comprehensive and lasting peace, which the Arab world is calling for, requires from us to fully support the Palestinian people." Despite criticism from the west, specifically the United States, Bouteflika insisted that Arab nations would reform at their own pace.
In March 2016, the foreign ministers of the Arab league voted to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, Bouteflika voted with Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to reject the motion.
In sub-Saharan Africa, a major concern of Bouteflika's Algeria was the on-and-off Tuareg rebellions in northern Mali. Algeria asserted itself forcefully as mediator in the conflict, perhaps underlining its growing regional influence. Compromise peace agreements were reached in 2007 and 2008, both mediated by Algiers.
On July 16, 2009, President of Vietnam Nguyen Minh Triet met with Bouteflika on the sidelines of the 15th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Egypt. President Triet and Bouteflika agreed that the two countries still have great potential for development of political and trade relations. Triet praised the Algerian government for creating favorable conditions for the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group to invest in oil and gas exploration and exploitation in Algeria.
Bouteflika was admitted to a hospital in France on November 26, 2005, reportedly suffering from a gastric ulcer hemorrhage, and discharged three weeks later. However, the length of time for which Bouteflika remained virtually incommunicado led to rumors that he was critically ill with stomach cancer. He checked into the hospital again in April 2006.
A leaked diplomatic cable revealed that, by the end of 2008, Bouteflika had developed stomach cancer.
Bouteflika appointed a new Prime Minister, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, in 2006. Belkhadem then announced plans that violated the Algerian Constitution to allow the President to run for office indefinitely and increase his powers. This was widely regarded as aimed to let Bouteflika run for president for a third term. In 2008, Belkhadem was again shifted out of the premiership and his predecessor Ahmed Ouyahia brought in, having also come out in favor of the constitutional amendment.
The Council of Ministers announced on November 3, 2008, that the planned constitutional revision proposal would remove the presidential term limit previously included in Article 74. The People's National Assembly endorsed the removal of the term limit on November 12, 2008. Only the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) voted against its removal.
Following the constitutional amendment allowing him to run for a third term, on February 12, 2009, Bouteflika announced his independent candidacy in the 2009 presidential election. On April 10, 2009, it was announced that Bouteflika had won the election with 90.24% of the vote, on a turnout of 74%, thereby obtaining a new five-year term. Several opposition parties had boycotted the election, with the opposition Socialist Forces Front citing a "tsunami of massive fraud."
In 2010, journalists gathered to demonstrate for press freedom and against Bouteflika's self-appointed role as editor-in-chief of Algeria's state television station. In February 2011, the government rescinded the state of emergency that had been in place since 1992 but still banned all protest gatherings and demonstrations. However, in April 2011, over 2,000 protesters defied an official ban and took to the streets of Algiers, clashing with police forces. Protesters noted that they were inspired by the recent Egyptian revolution, and that Algeria was a police state and "corrupt to the bone".
In 2013, Bouteflika suffered a debilitating stroke. A journalist, Hichem Aboud, was pursued for "threatening national security, territorial integrity, and normal management of the Republic's institutions" and his newspapers were censored, because he wrote that the President had returned from Val-de-Grâce in a "comatose state" and had characterized Saïd Bouteflika as the puppet-master running the administration.
Following yet another constitutional amendment, allowing him to run for a fourth term, Bouteflika announced that he would. He met the electoral law requiring a candidate to collect over 60,000 signatures from supporters in 25 provinces. On April 18, 2014, Bouteflika was re-elected with 81% of the vote, while Benflis was second with 12.18%. The turnout was 51.7%, down from the 75% turnout in 2009. Several opposition parties boycotted the election again, resulting in allegations of fraud.
Bouteflika was admitted to a clinic at Grenoble in France in November 2014. In November 2016, he was hospitalized in France for medical checks.
On February 20, 2017, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel canceled her trip to Algeria an hour before takeoff, reportedly because Bouteflika was suffering from severe bronchitis.
In June 2017, Bouteflika made a rare, and brief, appearance on Algerian state television presiding over a cabinet meeting with his new government. In a written statement, he ordered the government to reduce imports, curb spending, and be wary of foreign debt. He called for banking sector reform and more investment in renewable energy and "unconventional fossil hydrocarbons." Bouteflika was wheelchair-bound and had not given a speech in public since 2014 due to aphasia following his stroke. That same year, he made his final public appearance while unveiling a new metro station and newly renovated Ketchaoua Mosque in Algiers.
During his later term as president, Bouteflika was not seen in public for more than two years, and several of his close associates had not seen him for more than one year. It was alleged that he could hardly speak and communicated by letter with his ministers.
On February 10, 2019, a press release signed by long-ailing Bouteflika announcing he would seek a fifth consecutive term provoked widespread discontent. Youth protesters demanded his picture be removed from city halls in Kenchela and Annaba in the days before the national demonstrations on February 22, organized via social media. Those in Algiers, where street protests are illegal, were the biggest in nearly 18 years. Protestors ripped down a giant poster of Bouteflika from the landmark Algiers central post office.
On March 11, 2019, after sustained protests, Bouteflika announced that he would not seek a new term. However, his withdrawal from the elections was not enough to end the protests. On March 31, 2019, Bouteflika along with the Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui who had taken office 20 days earlier, formed a 27-member cabinet with only 6 of the appointees being retained from the outgoing president administration. The next day, Bouteflika announced that he would resign by April 28, 2019. Acceding to demands by the army chief of staff, Bouteflika ultimately resigned a day later, on April 2, 2019.
Following his resignation, Bouteflika became a recluse and made no public appearances due to failing health. Bouteflika spent his final years in a medicalized state residence in Zeralda, a suburb of Algiers. He also had a private residence in El Biar.
Bouteflika died on September 17, 2021, at his home in Zéralda from cardiac arrest at the age of 84. His death was announced on state television by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. He had been in failing health since he had a stroke in 2013.
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria’s Longest-Serving President, Dies at 84
Mr. Bouteflika, ousted from the presidency in 2019 after 20 years in office, joined the country’s fight for independence in the 1950s and helped lead the nation out of a brutal civil war in the 1990s.
Amir Jalal Zerdoumi and
ALGIERS — Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who joined his country’s fight against French colonial rule in the 1950s, rose to foreign minister at 26, went into exile over corruption charges and then returned to help lead the nation out of civil war, has died, state television reported on Friday. He was 84.
Mr. Bouteflika, who was forced out of the presidency in 2019, led Algeria for 20 years, longer than any of his predecessors.
After having a stroke in early 2013, he spent two and a half months in a French military hospital and many more months recuperating.
After the stroke, Mr. Bouteflika was rarely seen in public or on television, leaving the impression with many that the country was being governed by his inner circle, which was suspected in numerous corruption scandals.
ADVERTISEMENT
Despite his health problems, he insisted on running for a fourth term in elections in April 2014, a decision that divided the ruling elite, the military and the country’s intelligence apparatus. Algeria’s main opposition parties refused to take part in the election, and when he was returned to power with an unlikely 81 percent of the vote, they refused to recognize the result.
Mr. Bouteflika nevertheless remained in power, ruling by written directive and occasionally receiving foreign dignitaries.
- Did you know you can share 10 gift articles a month, even with nonsubscribers?
Protests broke out in late February 2019, when it was announced Mr. Bouteflika would run for a fifth term in elections scheduled for April 18. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators processed peacefully in central Algiers on March 1, chanting “Bye, Bye, Bouteflika” and “No fifth term!” amid news reports that he had left the country for medical tests in Geneva.
By April of that year, the popular unrest forced his resignation.
He was born to Algerian parents on March 2, 1937, in Oudja, in Morocco, then a French protectorate, where he grew up and went to school. (His Moroccan beginnings usually went unmentioned in his official Algerian biography.)
At age 20 he joined the National Liberation Army in its insurgency against Algeria’s French colonial administration and served in the so-called Borders Army, which operated from Moroccan territory. He became a close assistant to the revolutionary leader Houari Boumediene.
ADVERTISEMENT
After Algeria won independence in 1962, Mr. Bouteflika was appointed minister of youth and sports in the government of Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first elected president. He headed Algerian delegations to negotiations with the French in 1963 and was appointed foreign minister that year.
In 1965 he was an important actor in a bloodless coup led by Mr. Boumedienne that overthrew President Ben Bella. Mr. Bouteflika remained in charge of the Foreign Ministry until Mr. Boumediene’s death in December 1978. He was a talented and dashing foreign minister, who led a policy of anti-colonialism and noninterference and brought Algeria to prominence as a leader of the nonaligned movement and a founding member of the African Union.
For a while Mr. Bouteflika was mentioned as a potential successor to Mr. Boumedienne, until he was arrested on charges of misappropriating millions of dollars from the foreign ministry’s budget over years and was tried by the Court of Auditors. He decided — or was forced — to go into exile abroad for six years.
Returning to Algeria in 1987, he rejoined the Central Committee of the National Liberation Front, the political arm of the independence movement. But he remained a backstage figure through most of the 1990s, when military and intelligence figures dominated the government amid Algeria’s war with Islamist insurgents.
The uprising began when the government aborted elections to avert a landslide victory by the Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, also known by its French abbreviation, F.I.S.
Mr. Bouteflika made his way back to the forefront as the civil war was coming to an end. Running for president in 1999, he found himself the only candidate left standing after six rivals pulled out in protest, saying conditions in which the election took place were unfair.
As president he promoted the concept of “national reconciliation,” imposing a de facto amnesty on all antagonists of the war, whether Islamists or members of the military. Both sides had been accused by human rights organizations of committing atrocities during the war, which left an estimated 200,000 Algerians dead.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Bouteflika won three more elections after that, the last one in April 2014, after the Constitution was amended to allow him to run without term limits. His supporters credited him with restoring peace and security to the country after a decade of ruinous war and suggested that he was the only person capable of uniting the country in its aftermath. Opponents blamed him for economic stagnation and increasing corruption and cronyism as his rule lengthened, and by the end they criticized as selfish his refusal to cede power when his health was ailing.
Nevertheless, he ensured that Algeria remained an important influence in North African regional affairs, cooperating discreetly with France and the United States on counterterrorism strategy in the region, and helping to mediate conflicts and political instability in neighboring states of Mali, Libya and Tunisia.
Mr. Bouteflika was only briefly married and had no children. He is survived by a brother, Said Bouteflika, 63, who was imprisoned after Mr. Bouteflika’s resignation and convicted in 2020 of conspiring against the state and undermining the military.
No comments:
Post a Comment