Abdelaziz Bouteflika: Difference between revisions

'''Abdelaziz Bouteflika''' (2 March 1937 – 17 September 2021) was an Algerian politician and diplomat who served as President of Algeria from 1999 to his resignation in 2019.

Before his stint as an Algerian politician, Bouteflika served during the [[Algerian War]] as a member of the [[National Liberation Front of Algeria|National Liberation Front]]. After Algeria gained its independence from France, he 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 1983 he was convicted of stealing millions of dinars from Algerian embassies during his diplomatic career.

In 1999, Bouteflika was elected president of Algeria in a landslide victory. He would win re-elections in [[2004 Algerian presidential election|2004]], [[2009 Algerian presidential election|2009]], and [[2014 Algerian presidential election|2014]]. As President, he presided over the end of the [[Algerian Civil War]] in 2002 when he took over the project of his immediate predecessor President [[Liamine Zéroual]], and he ended [[emergency rule]] in February 2011 amidst [[Arab Spring|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 2 April 2019 after months of [[2019–2021 Algerian protests|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 at the age of 84 in 2021, over two years after his resignation.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born on 2 March 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 Aïcha), as well as four brothers (Abdelghani, Mustapha, Abderahim, and Saïd) and one sister (Latifa). [[Saïd Bouteflika]], 20 years his junior, would later be appointed special counselor to his brother in 1999. Unlike Saïd, who was raised mostly in [[Tlemcen]], He successively attended three schools in Oudja: Sidi Ziane, El Hoceinia, and Abdel Moumen High Schools, where he reportedly excelled academically. He was also affiliated with Qadiriyya Zaouia in 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 of Algeria|National Liberation Army]], which was a military branch of the [[National Liberation Front of Algeria|National Liberation Front]]. He received his military education at the École des Cadres in [[Dar El Kebdani]], Morocco. In 1957–1958, he was designated a controller of Wilaya V,<ref name="nahar" /> making reports on the conditions at the [[Algeria–Morocco border|Moroccan border]] and in west Algeria, but later became the administrative secretary of [[Houari Boumédiène]]. He became one of his closest collaborators and a core member of his [[Oujda Group]]. In 1960, he was assigned to leading the Malian Front in the Algerian south and became known for his nom de guerre of Abdelkader al-Mali, which has survived until today In 1962, at the arrival of independence, he aligned with Boumédienne and the border armies in support of [[Ahmed Ben Bella]] against the [[Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic]].

He was a prime mover in the [[1965 Algerian coup d'état|military coup led by Houari Boumediene]] that overthrew Ben Bella on 19 June 1965.

[[File:Abdelaziz Bouteflika & Houari Boumédiène 1975.jpg|left|thumb|195x195px|[[Houari Boumédiène]] and his young Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in the company of the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim,

He also served as president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 and of the seventh special session in 1975,

In 1981, he was charged with having stolen Algerian embassies' money between 1965 and 1979. On 8 August 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]], his colleagues Senouci and Boudjakdji were jailed.<ref name=court/> After the amnesty, Bouteflika was given back his diplomatic passport, a villa where he used to live but did not own, and all his debt was erased. He never paid back the money "he 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.<ref name=left/> Bouteflika was thought to represent the party's "right wing" that was more open to economic reform and rapprochement with the West.<ref name=left/> 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" marginalised the old guard.

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 proposal to succeed the assassinated president, [[Mohamed Boudiaf]]; he claimed later that this was because the army would not grant him full control over the armed forces. Instead, General [[Liamine Zéroual]] became president.

[[File:Vladimir Putin 4 April 2001-1.jpg|thumb|206x206px|[[Vladimir Putin]] and Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Kremlin, Moscow, on 4 April 2001]]

In 1999, after Zéroual unexpectedly stepped down and announced early elections, Bouteflika successfully ran for president as an independent candidate, supported by the military. Bouteflika subsequently organised 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.

On 8 April 2004, Bouteflika was re-elected by an unexpectedly high 85% of the vote in an [[2004 Algerian presidential 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.<ref name="Holm" /> 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.

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 subsequently stepped back from this position and supported 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 & gas company, in new developments.

On 16 July 2009, President of Vietnam Nguyễn Minh Triết,  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 favourable conditions for the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group to invest in oil and gas exploration and exploitation in Algeria.