In one year, the Algerian Hirak revolt went from hope to disillusionment

In Algiers

Algiers, Friday, February 22, 2019. The weekly prayer finished, a precarious calm reigns over the center of the capital. Ten days earlier, the Algerians learned that Abdelaziz Bouteflika would run for a fifth term in the presidential election scheduled for April 18, 2019. After twenty years in power, the president weakened by a stroke in 2013, is still not not satiated.

Since then, sporadic demonstrations have rocked several cities in the interior of the country and calls to demonstrate in the capital circulate on the internet. This Friday, February 22, the demonstrators, some of whom are still dressed in their white gandoura, are numerous to leave the mosques but among the slogans, which resound on the Haussmannian buildings, none is religious. "There is no president, there is a framework" , "there will be no fifth term Bouteflika" , shout the demonstrators in front of feverish police. Who could have foreseen such a surge then

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