Algérie: Bouteflika inhumé avec moins d'honneurs que ses prédécesseurs

[mahjoub]

Les funérailles étaient beaucoup moins que celles de Benbella ou Chadli Jdid

les caporaux avaient peur d'un soulèvement et le retour du Hirak

[barthez]

Franchement, un tank pour inhumer une personne, il faut le faire !

Heureusement qu'ils ne l'ont pas mit dans un camion benne

[elbieroi]

Algérie : Bouteflika inhumé avec moins d'honneurs que ses prédécesseurs

" Tayabet el Hammam", comme il l'aurait si bien dit. "Ils lui ont fait ceci", "il ne lui pas fait cela…"

Il y avait la présence du président de la république de tous les officiels du gouvernement, la présence du chef d’état-major des armées et de ses généraux, il a eu des funérailles protocolaires officielles d’un ex-président, il a été enterré et il est parti chez son créateur. Circulez, il n y a plus rien à voir dirait un gendarme posté devant sa tombe.

Des français et des marocains qui se soucient du protocole qu’on dispose à un ex-président algérien. On risque vraiment de croire qu’ils s’intéressent aux protocoles funèbres algériens.

[Anzoul]

Elbi


Algeria buries ex-president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in muted funeral

By Rédaction Africanews
Last updated: 20/09/2021
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Algeria on Sunday buried Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the North African country's longest-serving president, at a cemetery for its independence heroes, but without the honours accorded to his predecessors.

Bouteflika died on Friday aged 84, after a career which took him from being the world's youngest foreign minister to one of its oldest heads of state, but ended with a humbling fall from power.

The veteran strongman had lived as a recluse since quitting office in April 2019 after the military abandoned him following weeks of street protests sparked by his bid to run for a fifth presidential term.

His muted funeral, with no lying in state and just three days of national mourning instead of eight, reflected a mixed legacy that left many Algerians indifferent to the ceremony.

"Frankly, I've got better things to do than follow the funeral of a president who left the country in a terrible state," retired financial sector employee Fares told AFP in the capital Algiers.

But after the burial, around 200 mourners gathered around his tomb and placed flowers on it, an AFP photographer said.

Bouteflika, who had first served as foreign minister in the mid-1960s, swept to the presidency in 1999 on a wave of popular support as his amnesty offer to Islamist militants helped bring an end to a decade-long civil war.

But despite economic progress amid high oil prices in the early years of his rule, crude exporter Algeria later saw growing corruption and unemployment which became key drivers of the Hirak pro-democracy movement that eventually ousted him.

- Muted ceremony -

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune flanked by top government officials attended Sunday's funeral, while the minister for independence fighters, Laid Rebiga, read an eulogy.

An armoured vehicle towed his flag-draped coffin on a gun carriage adorned with flowers and escorted by lines of police on motorcycles.

Apart from family members, government members and foreign diplomats attended the ceremony, guarded by blue- and black-uniformed security officers.

The procession travelled from Bouteflika's residence to the cemetery east of downtown Algiers, as bystanders filmed it with their mobile phones.

Tebboune, who succeeded Bouteflika and once served as his premier, placed a wreath of the freshly-dug tomb amid a gun-salute, the official APS news agency reported.

Only journalists from state media were given access to the ceremony which was not broadcast live, in contrast to the fanfare of previous presidential deaths.

The People's Palace, where other presidents had lain in state, appeared to have been prepared to display his remains before the interment, but this was cancelled.

- Ill health and protests -

Bouteflika had wanted to outdo his mentor, the country's second president Houari Boumediene, by boosting Algeria's regional influence and turning the page on a civil war in the 1990s which killed around 200,000 people, University of Algiers politics lecturer Louisa Dris Ait Hamadouche said.

Instead, "the institutions of the state have never been so weakened, so divided or so discredited," she said.

Dubbed "Boutef" by Algerians, Bouteflika was known for wearing his trademark three-piece suit even in the stifling heat, and won respect as a foreign minister as well as for helping foster post-civil war peace.

Algeria was largely spared the uprisings that swept the Arab world in 2011, something many credited to memories of the civil war and a boost in state handouts.

But graft under Bouteflika and his circle left Africa's largest nation by surface area, with vast oil wealth, with poor infrastructure and high unemployment.

Bouteflika also faced criticism from rights groups and opponents who accused him of being authoritarian.

He suffered a mini-stroke in April 2013 that affected his speech, and he was forced to use a wheelchair, barely appearing in public during a presidential campaign the following year.

His bid in 2019 for a fifth term sparked protests that soon grew into the Hirak pro-democracy movement.

Some Bouteflika-era figures were eventually jailed, including his powerful brother Said, who was however permitted to attend Sunday's funeral. But many members of the old guard are still running the country.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI was the first head of state to send condolences to Tebboune, despite tensions between the two neighbours.

And French President Emmanuel Macron described Bouteflika as a "major figure" in contemporary Algeria.

[Nodjoud]

Et oui, cette pourriture est morte en emportant la culture du culte de la personnalité qu'il avait répandu dans notre société avec lui.

L'Algérie n'est pas une secte comme le royaume bananier d'à côté.

[Anzoul]

Elbi






END OF AN ERA
Algeria: Bouteflika buried with fewer honours than his predecessors
By Jeune Afrique
Posted on Monday, 20 September 2021 11:31



Algeria's former and late president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Geneva, June 7, 2005. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

The former Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was buried Sunday 19 September in the square of martyrs of El Alia cemetery in Algiers, reserved for the heroes of the war of independence. But unlike his predecessors, he was laid to rest with fewer honours.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was ousted from power in 2019 after 20 years at the helm of Algeria, died on Friday at the age of 84 in his medical residence in Zeralda, west of Algiers.

An armoured vehicle towed his flag-draped coffin on a gun carriage adorned with flowers and escorted by lines of police on motorcycles after having travelled some 30 km from Zeralda.



The convoy carrying the coffin of former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika drives on its way to the El Alia cemetery in Algiers, Sunday, Sept.19, 202. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Alongside family members, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who was Prime Minister under Bouteflika, ministers and foreign diplomats were present at the cemetery, according to media reports.

Only Algerian journalists from the national public media were granted access to the ceremony which was not broadcast live, in stark contrast to the usual fanfare of previous presidential deaths.

At the People’s Palace, the place where other presidents are laid in state, appeared to have been prepared to display the Bouteflika’s body before his burial, but this was cancelled.

The bodies of Bouteflika’s predecessors and even his former chief of staff Ahmed Gaïd Salah had all been exposed in this ceremonial building before being buried.

This funeral is a non-event. Around me, nobody talks about it in any case. It’s as if it were the death of a simple person who has never been president.

Laïd Rebigua, the Minister of Mujahedeen (Independence Fighters ), delivered the eulogy of the man who was also, in the 1970s, a flamboyant head of Algerian diplomacy for 14 years.

The remains of Bouteflika were then laid to rest in the Martyrs’ Square where his predecessors are buried, alongside the figures of Algeria’s war of independence (1954-1962).

‘The death of an ordinary person’?
Weakened and wheelchair-ridden since his stroke in 2013, the ex-president was forced to resign on 2 April 2019, following pressure from massive demonstrations of the pro-democracy Hirak movement against his intention to run for a 5th consecutive term.

After several hours of no official reaction, President Tebboune, in power since late 2019, finally ordered on Saturday lowering of the national flag and three days of mourning to honour the “Mujahideen Abdelaziz Bouteflika”.

These delays indicated, according to observers, fears of hostile demonstrations against the former president who acquired a tarnished image.

“Frankly, I have better things to do than to take an interest in the funeral of a president who left the country in a lamentable state. I prefer to take care of my birds,” said Fares, 62, a retired finance minister who lives in Algiers.

For Islam, 45, a postman in the capital, “this funeral is a non-event. Around me, nobody talks about it in any case. It’s as if it were the death of a simple person who has never been president. Algerians give the impression of having forgotten Bouteflika, of having turned the page on his reign.”

‘A lot of hatred’
“There is a lot of hatred around the figure of Bouteflika on social networks,” says Isabelle Werenfels, a Swiss researcher specialising in the Maghreb at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

This has made current decision-makers “nervous” about the organisation of the funeral, she adds, because “among the political, economic and administrative elites, there is a fairly large number of people who are products or beneficiaries of the Bouteflika era”.

All former heads of state have had solemn funerals and eight days of national mourning, as did the first president of independent Algeria Ahmed Ben Bella (1963-1965) and the third head of state Chadli Bendjedid (1979-1992), both of whom died in 2012.

Not to mention the grandiose funeral of Bouteflika’s mentor, ex-president Houari Boumedienne (1965-1978), marked in 1978 by the firing of a hundred cannon shots, which brought together hundreds of thousands of people.

After the announcement of the death of the deposed president on Friday by a simple brief read on national television, Algeria’s official media gave it a simple treatment.



A man walks past newspapers headlining on former Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s death, in Algiers, Sunday, Sept.19, 2021. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
The powerful head of Algerian diplomacy, Ramtane Lamamra, a former minister under Bouteflika, waited until Sunday to convey his condolences to the family.

Abroad, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI sent a message of “compassion” to Tebboune, despite high tensions between the two countries.