ALGIERS: Algeria’s prime minister has called on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to seek a fifth term in April 2019, despite his age and partial paralysis.
Bouteflika, who uses a wheelchair, hasn’t yet made known if he’ll run next year, by which time he’ll be 82.
Ahmed Ouyahia said Thursday at the opening of his party’s national council that Bouteflika twice saved the North African nation, with his policy of reconciliation that allowed extremist insurgents who nearly brought down the state in the 1990s to rejoin civilian life and by protecting Algeria against the Arab Spring chaos that toppled leaders in Tunisia and Libya.
Ouyahia heads the National Democratic Rally, the No. 2 force in the governing coalition after the FLN, whose chief last October also called for Bouteflika to run.
Bouteflika, head of the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), has led Algeria since 1999 and won a fourth term in 2014 despite suffering a stroke the previous year.
The president made two rare public appearances in a wheelchair in April and May, at the inauguration of a mosque and for the extension of the Algiers metro.
In late May, a group of academics and political figures urged him not to seek a fifth mandate, citing his "advanced age" and "dramatic state of health", and warning against "unhealthy forces" trying to convince him to stand.
