Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has resigned after weeks of mass protests against his 20-year rule, according to state media.
The 82-year-old leader announced he was standing down in a statement carried by the APS news agency on Tuesday, hours after Algeria’s army chief demanded immediate action to remove Bouteflika from office.
Ahmed Gaid Salah said constitutional means to declare the president unfit to rule should be applied immediately.
“There is no more room to waste time… We decided clearly…to stand with the people so all their demands get fulfilled,” Salah said after a meeting with senior officers.
Protests against Bouteflika broke out across Algeria in February when the longtime president announced his decision to run for a fifth term.
He sought to defuse the unprecedented unrest by announcing on March 11 he was dropping plans to run in the elections, which were also delayed, but the protests continued to gain traction as demonstrators called for the president and his close associates to quit.
On Monday, Bouteflika, in poor health and rarely seen in public since he suffered a stroke in 2013, had said he would quit before the end of his term on April 28.
But a protest leader and opposition parties rejected this as insufficient, while hundreds of students marched through the capital Algiers on Tuesday to demand the replacement of a political system widely seen as incapable of significant reform.
🔴 #Urgent
Le président de la République, Abdelaziz #Bouteflika, a notifié officiellement au président du #Conseil_constitutionnel, sa décision de mettre fin à son mandat en qualité de président de la République. pic.twitter.com/cjunX9gwsL— APS | وأج (@APS_DZ) April 2, 2019
Translation: “President of the Republic, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, officially notified the president of the constitutional council his decision to end his mandate as president of the Republic.”
Calvin Dark, international affairs analyst, said Bouteflika’s resignation on Tuesday underscored that it was the military that held power in Algeria.
“As you watched the protests over the last five, six weeks, everybody was asking, ‘Where does the military stand?'” Dark told Al Jazeera.
“In a practical way, nothing was going to move, until [the military] made a move. When that support for Bouteflika started to deteriorate among the military elites, that is what put things in motion.
“It will be interesting if protesters can articulate exactly what that change will look like.”
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
