Official assurances about the improving health of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, hospitalised in France in April, have failed to convince many Algerians, as analysts warn that hiding such details is harder than it was.
On Tuesday, France’s defence ministry said Bouteflika was moved from the Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris to a new facility in the French capital “to continue his convalescence”.
But it gave few other details and no pictures have emerged of the 76-year-old president since he suffered a mini-stroke nearly four weeks ago, which has merely stoked speculation about his condition.
Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal had on Monday denounced the “false information carried by certain foreign media,” insisting that Bouteflika’s illness would soon be “no more than an unpleasant memory”.
Sellal said he was “following up daily on the activities of the government”.
But experts are wary of such pronouncements, with precedents in France and Algeria of the public being kept in the dark about their ailing leaders, which they say is harder in the internet age.
wirestory
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