But where is the president? At the end of 1978, Algiers was buzzing with rumors that were whispered very low far from the ears of military security. Since the beginning of the year, Houari Boumédiène, 46, has reduced his public appearances and, recently, the weekly meetings of the Council of Ministers have been canceled eight times, while official hearings have been postponed, enough to feed the worst worries. But awhen is Boumediene who holds the reins of power since his coup against Ben Bella in June 1965 and who has already survived a putsch in 1967 and an assassination attempt a year later, coming out with a bullet in the left cheek?
“Working visit” to the USSR
Very weakened after having participated in the Arab summit in Damascus at the end of September 1978, the president seems to suffer from mysterious headaches and the only public television avoids showing it as much as possible. Worried, the governing staff decided to send him to Moscow in early October. It is only ten days after that the information is made public, and again. The very official Algeria Presse Service (APS) wrote on October 15 that Boumediene is in the USSR for … a “working visit”, explaining, the next day, that he had interviews with the President of the USSR Leonid Brezhnev and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Aleksey Kosygin.
On October 16, the Soviet agency Tass broadcast a two-minute sequence showing the smiling Algerian president, before announcing, three days later, that Boumediene “agreed” to extend his stay in Moscow. According to the correspondent of Le Monde in Algiers, Boumediene “would have had a kidney disease”. According to AFP, “he would suffer from an infection of dental origin which would have caused paralysis of the left side of the face and left arm”. Faced with rumors and disturbing allusions, especially in the European press, decision-makers in Algiers are alarmed and attacked “circles known for their traditional hostility to the Algerian revolution, which have poured out a flood of rumors as diverse as they are surprising, concerning the building of socialism, the solidity of the institutions and the health of the president ”, to use the words of… Abdelaziz Bouteflika, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, on 1is November.
Waldenström : un mal incurable
The world also reports that a deleterious atmosphere reigns in Algiers, citing the official press which “is working to denounce with more rigor than ever “Internal reaction” and “the enemies of the revolution”. Daily in Arabic Chaab even considers that “The most dangerous of his enemies are those who have infiltrated state agencies,” and asserts: “There is only one way to get rid of this gangrene: amputation. ” Finally, on November 14, the APS indicates that Boumediene has returned from the Soviet Union, that he has observed a “period of rest accompanied by medical treatment” and that he must “rest on a decision of a medical commission. “.
Four days later, the Head of State was urgently hospitalized at the Mustapha-Bacha University Hospital in Algiers. He is in a coma until November 24. In the meantime, the Revolutionary Council, a semi-formal body of power, announces “its desire to ensure the leadership of the country” and sits permanently. Around the sick president, doctors and specialists from all over the world follow one another. Without convincing results. Only the Swedish Jan Gosta Waldenström, rushed to Algiers, manages to diagnose the disease. Boumediene disease is a hematological cancer and has a name: Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a rare and incurable pathology which has already affected other leaders such as Georges Pompidou, the last Shah of Iran or even Golda Meir. On November 28, Boumedienne fell back into a coma. Composed of Algerians, Americans, Soviets, British, Yuguslavs, Lebanese, East Germans, Tunisians and French, the medical team is working hard. In vain. He won’t be coming back.
A vitrified Algeria
The correspondent of World in Algiers details the impressive medical equipment mobilized to try to save the president, while Waldenström had warned Algerian officials that there was little hope: “A plasma machine provided by the Saint-Louis hospital in Paris, a gamma ray camera from Federal Germany and, of course, the two scanners. One, supplied as spare parts on November 24 by a German firm, was assembled on site. The other, ready to go, remains installed in a laboratory truck brought from California on November 27 by a giant galaxy cargo plane from the United States Army. ”
The country holds its breath for a long month. The government wants to give the illusion that it is still functioning while the demons politicians seize the apparatchiks for the after, the succession of the strong man of the country. An FLN congress was to open at the beginning of 1979, and, according to rumors, Boumediene wanted to impose new reforms there, removing some heads of the regime. But no preparation committee has been set up. The country, humanly and politically, is vitrified.
Only certain foreign radios and the Algiers rumor then allow to have news on the deterioration of the health of Boumédiène. And it is not the long message read on the radio on his behalf on November 30, addressed to General Gaafar El Nimeyri, President of Sudan and head of the Organization of African Unity, which will be delusional.
The writings of the French press of the time speak of a deep fatalism which gripped the Algerian population, which is preparing for the trauma of the disappearance of one of the leaders of the Third World. We no longer expect anything from the Mustapha-Bacha University Hospital, we look elsewhere, towards the Moorish palaces of the heights of Algiers where the succession is being woven. On December 27, the authorities announced the death of President Houari Boumédiène. The lightning war for his succession will not last the time of mourning. The army and the secret services, created by the deceased, take control and impose Colonel Chadli Bendjedid as the new first of the Algerians.

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