Algeria: President Buteflika resigned after more than a month of mass protests

Last of the Arab rulers who dominated the postcolonial era with an iron fist, Abdelaziz Buteflika, announced Tuesday his resignation after weeks of popular mbad demonstrations to demand his departure from power and the requirement of his own army to declare him constitutionally disqualified.

Buteflika, seriously ill since he's had a stroke in 2013, officially announced to the President of the Constitutional Council his decision to resign and end his mandate as President of the Republic, according to the Algerian official agency APS.

The first octogenarian will remain in the story as great conspirator, the man who managed the backstage of power to ensure the supremacy of the army.

Born in the Moroccan border town of Oudja, son of a wealthy family of Tlemcen, Buteflika He began his career at the age of 19 in the ranks of the so-called Border Army., the militia that rose up and led the war of independence of Africa (1956-1961), one of the bloodiest of the continent.

Political plumber of his boss, Colonel Houari Boumediane, the young Buteflika was the voice that canceled the Evian peace agreement and opened the doors to the coup without bloodshed it would give power to the new Algerian army.

In 1963, at the age of 26 and with the overthrow of Ben Bella still in power, he was named Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he will occupy for three decades and which would make it the friendly face of the Algerian military regime in these turbulent times.

Strong supporter of Arab socialism, the organization of non-aligned countries and the Palestinian cause, played a fundamental role in the 1970s, during which Algerian terrorists, such as Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, alias "Carlos el Chacal", pbaded through Algeria.

In addition, it was in the decision of President Boumediane to recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)which led to the break-up of relations with Morocco and a continuing bilateral conflict.

After the death of his mentor, Bouteflika began losing influence in the cabinet of the new president, General Chadli Benjedid (1979-1992), another of Boumediane's protégés.

His trip to the desert began in 1981, when he was accused of corruption and deviation of 60 million francs from Swiss banks Algerian embbadies.

Found guilty in 1983, he decided to flee and get into what his biographers describe as a "self-exile" of four years in which he lived in various countries of the Persian Gulf.

In 1987, with Benjedid still in the presidency, returned to the country and went back to the ranks of the National Liberation Front, the party formed at the time of the colony that has governed Algeria since independence.

In 1989, began a little known era of his past that coincides with the beginning of "Black Decade" (1989-1999), the brutal civil war that claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 people and left many thousands missing.

Bouteflika rejected several ministerial posts in the government of the new president, Liamine Zeroual (1995-1999), enemy of the fallen Benjedid, went to Switzerland and lobbied in the most pragmatic branch of the army .

In 1999, supported by a broad faction of the armed forces, it was presented as presidential candidate, who won with 75% of the vote after the withdrawal of the remaining candidates after reporting a possible election fraud.

The road to approach of the Islamist guerrillas that his predecessor opened, decreed an amnesty, broke the resistance of the most radical part of the army and pacified the country, which has entered an era of reconciliation and reconstruction that is not yet over.

Although he never had the peace plan to adopt as a state policy, Buteflika was elected in 2004 in elections certified by the international community but they were again denounced by his opponent, retired General Ali Benflis.

In 2005, he resubmitted referendum your reconciliation planbut the first of his health problems sowed the first doubts about his ability and opened the uncertainty of the succession of a man who dominated the country with an iron fist and a narrow circle of military and politicians known as "The Power".

A "stomach ulcer" resulted in her being hospitalized for three months.

Eight years later, and in the middle of criticism for corruption within the regime and rumors about his supposed disability, Buteflika was a victim of a stroke that sentenced her to a wheelchair, with reduced motor abilities.

Since then, he no longer spoke in public or traveled abroad and his appearances in public began to gradually diminish., limited to images transmitted by state television.

Yet he won again the 2014 presidential election, without even participating in the election campaign that led outgoing Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, in a process boycotted by most parties.

The third and fourth terms were made possible by an amendment to the Constitution designed in the kitchens of "The Povoir" which, in 2017, has again changed the Constitution and called a referendum to qualify for a fifth term.

February 22 In 2019, the country was plunged into an acute economic and social crisis and the army under power after months of purges, tens of thousands of young people took to the streets of the country to protest against the fifth reelection. Consecutive of a president turned into "ghost".

Two days later, Buteflika was again transferred to a hospital in Switzerland.

Married to Amal Triki, daughter of a retired ambbadador with whom he married in 1990 at the age of 53. do not leave offspring.