As Abdelaziz Bouteflika fades, Algeria considers a successor

NOBODY WOULD call him quick and lithe. But Abdelaziz Bouteflika has something in common with the cheetahs that dart across the Sahara: he is rarely seen. Algeria’s 81-year-old president has made few public appearances since suffering a stroke in 2013 and being confined to a wheelchair. Last month a meeting with Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, was cancelled ostensibly because Mr Bouteflika had flu.

Yet the president, who has ruled since 1999, will probably win a fifth term in an election scheduled for April. Algeria is hardly democratic. It opened its political system in 1989, but Islamists won the first round of parliamentary polls in 1991 and the army cancelled the rest of the election. Since then elections have not been free or fair. Mr Bouteflika won the last one with a whopping 82% of the vote, even though he hardly campaigned.