Comment on Protests Turn Into Celebrations as Algeria’s President Says He Won’t Seek a Fifth Term

Protests Turn Into Celebrations as Algeria’s President Says He Won’t Seek a Fifth Term

(ALGIERS, Algeria) — Algeria’s president of two decades abandoned his bid for a fifth term Monday following unprecedented protests over his fitness for office, but his simultaneous postponement of an election set for next month had critics worried he intends to hold on to power. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has rarely been seen in public since he had a stroke in 2013 and just returned from two weeks in a Geneva hospital, promised to establish a panel to plan a rescheduled vote and to put an interim government in place. In a letter to the nation released by state news agency APS on Monday, Bouteflika, 82, stressed the importance of including Algeria’s disillusioned youth in the reform process and putting the country “in the hands of new generations.” But for many of the protesters – students, lawyers and even judges among them – the most important sentence in the president’s letter read, “There will be no fifth term.” Celebrations popped up instead of protests on the streets of the capital, Algiers, at the news.

 

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