Bouteflika's Atroke Fuels Algeria Leadership Debate
The health problems of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who suffered a mini-stroke at the weekend, have intensified speculation about who might succeed him one year ahead of presidential elections.
His hospitalization in France, coming amid press reports of corruption scandals implicating members of his family, have undermined speculation about the 76-year-old president running for a fourth term.
Bouteflika suffered a "transient ischemia" on Saturday and was flown to Paris for treatment at the Val de Grace military hospital, which often receives high-profile patients.
Officials in Algeria were quick to allay fears over his condition, with his doctor quoted as saying on Monday that he would return to Algeria within a week.
"The president is in very good health... He will come back to Algeria in several days... in not more than seven days," Rachid Bougherbal told the Algerian daily Ennahar, after speaking to Bouteflika on Sunday morning.
But the media and analysts are openly questioning the implications of Bouteflika's latest health scare, less than a year before a presidential election, and with Algerian political machinations typically shrouded in secrecy.
"The announcement of his illness -- something unusual for the Algerian regime -- is destined to prepare public opinion for the succession of Bouteflika," political analyst Rachid Tlemcani told Agence France Presse.
The president's health has been an endless source of speculation in Algeria, after he had surgery in Paris for a bleeding stomach ulcer in 2005 and spent a long period convalescing.
A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable in 2007 suggested he might be suffering from terminal stomach cancer, although Algiers at the time dismissed such speculation as "crazy rumors."
Ennahar said Bouteflika had resisted being treated in France this time but that his doctor had insisted on sending him there, saying the analysis and scan required were not available in Algeria.
But the latest development has brought next year's presidential election sharply into focus.
Tlemcani said Bouteflika could yet run again if he recovered. But if not, "the political field will be open for the first time in Algeria's history."
Others argued that the health scare has brought Bouteflika's political end in sight.
Rachid Grim, a political expert quoted in independent daily El Watan, said "the question of a fourth term will no longer arise. It is finished."
Algeria's decision-makers have already considered this scenario, he said, adding that "it would not be surprising if they pulled someone they have already prepared out of the hat."
"The future candidate will arrive like a letter in the post," Grim said.
Since independence from France in 1962, the army has always chosen Algeria's president.
An editorial in the Quotidien d'Oran said the latest deterioration in Bouteflika's health made "undeniable... the need to question his ability to lead the country."
"It remains for him to understand clearly that the time has come for him to step down in a serene and democratic manner," it added.
Le Soir d'Algerie, another French-language newspaper, insisted that the "current presidential term... appears in all senses like a term too many."
Bouteflika began his current third term in 2009, after a constitutional amendment allowed him to stand again, but he has not yet indicated an intention to do so next year.
A veteran of Algeria's war of independence, he later helped end a decade-long civil war that erupted in 1992 when the army cancelled elections that Islamists were poised to win, and which killed at least 150,000 people.
He is credited abroad with restoring stability.
But he has also been condemned by rights groups and opponents for being authoritarian, despite launching limited political reforms in April 2011 in the wake of Arab Spring unrest that toppled other long-standing regional rulers.
Source: Agence France Presse
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