Loyalist calls for ailing president to quit fail to end Algeria protests
ALGIERS: Thousands of Algerians gathered for new antigovernment protests in the capital on Friday despite moves by a succession of veteran loyalists to abandon ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Demonstrations were expected to take place across the North African country, where protests broke out more than a month ago when Bouteflika announced his bid for a fifth term.
Turnout was widely seen as a key test of the public mood after a succession of longtime loyalists deserted the president and called for him to step down to make way for a government- led change of leadership.
Activists angrily rejected the moves as a desperate bid by key figures in Bouteflika’s entourage to salvage their grip on power and demanded that they too quit.
“The people respond,” read the frontpage headline in El Watan, one of the few newspapers in Algeria to have a Friday edition.
From the early hours of Friday hundreds of protesters, many of them young but also including army veterans from the decastating civil war that gripped Algeria in the 1990s packed the square outside the capital’s main post office.
“We’re fed up with those in power,” the demonstrators chanted. “We want a new government”.
Some like Amin came from far afield to take part in the protest.
“We’re here to issue a final appeal to those in power: ‘ Take your bags and go’,” said the 45-year- old who travelled to the capital from the Mediterranean port of Bejaia, nearly 200 kilometres away.
Pictures posted online showed that some protesters had camped all night outside the main post office, which has become the epicentre of demonstrations against Bouteflika now in their sixth week.
Earlier this month, the 82year- old president, who uses a wheelchair and has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, said he would not stand for re- election but also postponed the April vote.
His move angered Algerians who saw it as a ploy by those around Bouteflika to extend his two decades in power and tens of thousands who again took to the streets demanding his immediate ouster. — AFP