Ailing Bouteflika’s Health Should Result in Election Withdrawal, Propel Ali Benflis to Favored Candidate

Ailing Bouteflika, the president of Algeria, has been literally invisible lately. His health concerns have candidates like Ali Benflis asking why he’s running again. 

The last time the public ever saw Ailing Bouteflika was on March 3^rd of this year, when he made a very short and brief television appearance to announce his presidential candidacy. A Daily Nation report inflected that this was first time that the president was even seen in two years, and that he has recently not even been taking phone calls or presidential visits, telling of his ailing health following a major stroke that hospitalized him. At 77-years-old, the president looked “frail” and ill, according to the report. He was barely able to speak, and he has not been seen since. With more than two years that separated that appearance from his last, the question that favored incumbent Ali Benflis has is: Why is he running for president when he’s too ill to get the job done?

A recent article on the Turkish Press said that Bouteflika was only responding to calls of the people to run for a fourth term. But this is contrary to the actual belief of the people in the country, who see a president sitting a third term illegally, one that was only made possible by revising of the constitution and making it legal for him to run for as many terms as he wants; something that used to be limited at two prior to his third election, one that was plagued by fraud and that has served as an outcry by politicians in this nation leading up the pending April 17^th election day. With most political parties boycotting the election, and with protests sweeping the country in favor of ousting the ailing president, it hardly seems like the people are calling for him to stay, but rather for him to step down and make way for much needed political change.

Then again, it’s also fair to consider that with how sick the president has become that he may also be senile. In the sense that he truly might believe that the entire nations wants him to run when it’s really quite the opposite. If the president heeds the actual call of the people and does step down, instead of pursuing a fourth term, Ali Benflis is the favored candidate to take the top post in this nation that’s trying to reinvent itself through much needed political change.