Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Published: 07 July, 2009
President
Born on March 2, 1937 in Oujda, then part of French Morocco, Bouteflika’s political roots trace back to Algeria’s war for independence. At the age of 19 he joined the Armée de Libération Nationale, the armed wing of the Front de Libération Nationale, in 1956.
Bouteflika, now 72, served as minister of youth, sport and tourism under Ben Bella after independence in 1962, before being appointed foreign minister in 1963 at the age of just 26.
He remained in this post until Houari Boumedienne’s death in 1978, who became president in June 1965. Bouteflika went into exile in 1981 after being marginalised by Boumedienne’s successor, re-entering Algerian politics in 1987.
He became president in 1999 following Liamine Zéroual’s surprise resignation, in a disputed election that officially declared him the winner with 74 percent of the vote.
His first term was marked by economic reforms aimed at increasing foreign investment in Algeria. However, towards the end of his second term there were signs of a reversal in this trend, with some suggesting that his policies were returning to the socialist creed of the Boumediemme era.
While Bouteflika’s election victories of 1999 and 2004 sparked severe internal criticism, with the main opposition parties boycotting them both, he has been credited with overseeing Algeria’s emergence from its civil war from 1992-2002 and its re-integration into international affairs.
In the wake of September 11, 2001, he positioned Algeria as a strategic ally in the United States’ so called ‘War on Terror’. Elected to a second term in 2004, he is also responsible for the introduction of a national reconciliation plan, offering amnesty to many former fighters in the civil war.
In 2006 he began taking steps to remove the two term limit on the president’s office as mandated by the Algerian constitution. The parliament finally passed an amendment in November 2008 removing the limit and paving the way for Mr Bouteflika’s third term in power.
