In April 2018, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) made a poor bet. On February 10, the bet was realized. Responding to the FLN’s call last year, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria’s president since 1999, announced his official candidacy for a fifth term in the now-postponed April elections, triggering a fall-of-the-regime kind of uprising in the country.

Bouteflika was once a fighter in the struggle that brought French colonialism to its knees by 1962. But this legacy was betrayed many years ago by corruption, many term extensions, and his forcing a constitutional amendment in 2009 that removed the cap on presidential terms.

Despite not being able to address the public or carry out any state function since he had a debilitating stroke in 2013, he won a fourth term in 2014. Vying for a fifth term even without a constitutional cover, since two-term limits were reinstated in the last constitutional amendment of 2016, his governing clique — le pouvoir, as Algerians call it — has pushed its luck too far this time.