Huge demos as key Bouteflika allies urged to resign
ALGIERS: A vast crowd of protesters pushing for reforms flooded the streets of Algiers Friday, while mass rallies were held across Algeria for the first time since ailing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned.
Activists chanted slogans demanding key Bouteflika loyalists follow his lead and quit, after social media calls for “joyful demonstrations” to “peacefully bring down a dictatorial regime”.
No official figures were immediately available on the size of the rally, but it was at least as big as those held on previous Fridays leading up to Bouteflika’s departure, said AFP journalists at the scene.
Rallies took place in 41 of the country’s 48 provinces, according to the official APS news agency which in a first published slogans highly hostile to those in power.
Opponents of the old regime had called for a massive turnout, targeting a triumvirate they dub the “3B” – Senate speaker Abdelkader Bensalah, head of the constitutional council Tayeb Belaiz and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui.
The veteran Bouteflika loyalists have been entrusted with overseeing the political transition after the president finally stepped down at the age of 82.
Bouteflika resigned late on Tuesday after weeks of demonstrations triggered by his bid for a fifth term in office. After two decades in power, he had lost the backing of key supporters including armed forces chief Ahmed Gaid Salah.
Bensalah, speaker of the upper house of parliament for 16 years, is to take the reins as interim president for three months until elections are organised.
Belaiz, a minister for 16 years, was named by Bouteflika as head of the Constitutional Council which will regulate the elections.
Before his appointment as prime minister, Bedoui had served as interior minister – or “chief engineer of electoral fraud” according to the El Watan newspaper
Opponents say all three are tarnished by their long years of service under Bouteflika and should follow his lead and resign.
Meanwhile the country’s intelligence services chief Athmane Tartag has been sacked and his duties handed to the defence ministry, the official APS news agency reported Friday.
Informed sources confirmed the move to AFP that the CSS chief had been removed from office.
Even hours before the rally started, several hundred demonstrators had gathered outside the main post office in central Algiers, which has been the epicentre of the protest movement. Some shouted “we will not forgive!” in reference to an open letter Bouteflika issued after his resignation, apologising to the Algerian people for “mistakes made”.
Said Wafi, a bank worker from the nearby city of Boumerdes, had arrived at 5:00 am in the hope of being “the first demonstrator against the system”.
“Bouteflika leaving means nothing if his men continue to run the country,” the 42-year-old said.
One of the leading voices of the protest movement, lawyer Mustapha Bouchachi, has called for the demonstrations to continue “until they have all gone”. — AFP