After weeks of mounting protests in Algeria, with hundreds of thousands gathering to call upon ailing 82-year-old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to relinquish office, there are further signs of the president’s inner circle deserting him.
The army’s chief of staff, Gen. Ahmed Gaed Salah — backed by a key part of the country’s ruling coalition, the National Rally for Democracy, and the General Union of Algerian Workers — has echoed protesters’ demands for the president to step aside, proposing a managed process that would see power ceded to a senior member of the country’s political establishment.
