The Bird Is on the Wing

He’s been running the oil-rich country for 18 years now, and for the most part, his administration has managed to keep a steady hand over a nation once torn by a brutal decade-long civil war and ferocious spates of jihadist terrorism.

But Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika may now be on his last legs, literally.

Underscoring that reality is the fact that the long-ailing leader suddenly called off a visit from German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this month because of “temporary unavailability” due to a severe case of bronchitis.

Merkel was reportedly just about to board a plane for Algiers when she got the news of the postponement.

Moreover, Bouteflika, now almost 80 years old, has rarely been seen in public since a stroke in 2013 left him partially paralyzed, and there are even unsubstantiated rumors that his mental health is also failing.

Bouteflika, who was reelected to office in 2014 by an overwhelming majority, is unlikely to survive his fourth five-year term.

Rumors are already buzzing as to who will replace Bouteflika when he dies, since there is no heir apparent for the one-time president of the United Nations General Assembly.

And while a tenuous status-quo has kept Africa’s largest country functioning for these last four years, there is a growing fear that without its firm-handed leader, Algeria could be facing serious economic and political setbacks in the years ahead.

For now, Bouteflika’s prime minister and right-hand man Abdelmalek Sellal has been picking up the slack, showing up on the president’s behalf to high-level meetings and summits, and even fulfilling the obligatory baby-kissing and hand-shaking duties of Algeria’s head of state.

And the Algerian people take an ignore-the-elephant-in-the-room approach to the inevitable, preferring to close their eyes to Bouteflika’s deteriorating health.

Bouteflika’s fervent staff of devotees, meanwhile, helps keep up appearances by focusing public attention on efforts to implement both social and economic reforms.

And Algeria’s governmental machinery is working diligently to diversify exports (more than 95 percent of the country’s overseas sales are hydrocarbons) and promote a business-friendly environment, in hopes of attracting investment and shoring up a faltering economy.

For now, the plan seems to be working.

The Emirati industrial group Emarat Dzayer has recently set up shop in Algeria, and, last November, German automotive giant Volkswagen began a partnership operation with Algeria’s joint-venture Sovac Production Corporation to begin producing more than 100 cars a day at a new plant in Relizane.

The flurry of incoming foreign capital has kept attention away from Bouteflika’s moribund condition.

But, sooner or later, Algeria’s herculean political superman will succumb to his own mortality, and Africa’s anchor of stability in a region engulfed in instability may well be rocked to its very core.

Alas, as the Persian poet Omar Khayyam once astutely wrote: “The bird of time has but a little way to fly, and, lo, the bird is on the wing.”

Thérèse Margolis can be reached at [email protected].