Algeria PM: Those urging for a military coup are unable to come to power alone

Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said yesterday that advocates for military intervention in politics “are people unable to defend their positions, and are still waiting for a tank to bring them to power”.

Speaking during a radio interview regarding calls for military intervention to isolate President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and “save the country” citing his inability to perform his duties since a stroke in 2013, Ouyahia said: “The advocates of military intervention in politics are waiting for the tank to bring them to power.”

Former Minister of Commerce Noureddine Boukrouh and famous journalist Hmida Ayachi, director of Algeria News, a banned independent daily newspaper, are heading calls for Bouteflika to be removed from power.On 26 August, former Prime Minister and head of the National Liberation Front, Ali Benflis said: “Algeria is facing a political and institutional crisis of exceptional gravity resulting from a vacancy at the top of the state’s pyramid.”

The Army has responded to calls for it to remove Bouteflika from power, saying: “Our army will remain republican, committed to defending national sovereignty and the inviolability of the national territory as well as the preservation of independence.”

“The army will never deviate from carrying out its constitutional duties under any circumstances.”

Read: 3,000 cases of corruption recorded in Algeria since 2013