To break the stalemate, Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaed Salah made a proposal on Tuesday for the constitutional council declare Bouteflika unfit for office, a move provided for under article 102 of the charter.

Salah said in a statement issued by the Defence Ministry on Saturday that most people supported the army’s plan but some were resisting, without naming those opposed to the move.

‘Undermining the military is a line not to cross’

He said trying to undermine the military, a revered institution in Algeria whose support has long been seen as vital to keeping Bouteflika and the ruling elite in power, was a “red line” that should not be crossed. He did not elaborate.

“All that emerges from these suspicious meetings of proposals that do not conform to constitutional legitimacy or undermine the national army, which is a red line, is totally unacceptable,” he said in the statement.

Bouteflika established himself in the early 2000s by ending a civil war that had claimed 200,000 lives. But he has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, and now faces the biggest crisis of his two-decade rule.

Under the constitution, the chairman of parliament’s upper house, Abdelkader Bensalah, would serve as caretaker president for at least 45 days if Bouteflika stepped down.

However, there is no obvious long-term successor to rule the nation which secured independence from France in 1962 after years of conflict and was embroiled in a bloody Islamist insurgency during the 1990s.

(REUTERS)