PARIS — After weeks of large-scale street protests, Algeria’s army chief of staff called Tuesday for a declaration that the incapacitated 82-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, be deemed unfit to rule, paving the way for an end to his 20 years in power.
Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, one of the top power brokers in the ruling regime who had until recently been loyal to the president, threw his weight behind what he called the “legitimate demands” of the demonstrators in a speech broadcast continuously on Algerian television.
The statement from the powerful army leader seemed to signal a near end to the president’s rule, and the thousands of people who have taken to the streets of the capital, Algiers, and other cities almost every day for weeks were joyful at the news.
But that joy could be short lived.
Army intervention has been decisive in resolving political crises throughout Algeria’s history, and Tuesday’s speech by General Gaid Salah in the desert town of Ouargla, in the country’s center, appeared to be another such moment.
But it was far less clear that Mr. Bouteflika’s removal would in fact meet the demonstrators’ other principal demand — an end to the corrupt nexus of politics, money and brute force that has come to be known to Algerians simply as the “System.”
That is the more difficult goal, analysts have suggested, as virtually all those in government are part of the System, including the man who would be designated as Mr. Bouteflika’s temporary constitutional successor, the president of the senate, Abdelkader Bensalah.
He was reappointed to his position by Mr. Bouteflika in 2013, is close to the Algerian president and like him is from the country’s west. At 76 he is part of the ruling gerontocracy and is a leading member of the R.N.D. party, which forms a coalition with the ruling F.L.N.
The procedure called for by General Gaid Salah involves a declaration by the country’s Constitutional Council that Mr. Bouteflika is unfit, a two-thirds vote in Parliament ratifying the declaration, interim rule for a maximum of 90 days by the president of the National Council — Mr. Bensalah — and elections within that span.
It was not immediately clear Tuesday when this sequence would begin.
Source : Nytimes
