Introduction In February 2014, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal announced that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika would be running for a fourth term. Having won re-election, he may well serve as Algeria's head of state for two decades. The president had recently suffered a stroke that required him to spend three months in a French hospital and, soon after returning home, Bouteflika was filmed in a meeting with the then-prime minister of France, Jean-Marc Ayrault. Official state television broadcast footage that showed a visibly fatigued Bouteflika, but one nevertheless engaged in conversation with his French guest. He is shown gesturing to the attentive nods of Ayrault, but according to the French television show ‘Le Petit Journal’, all was not as it seemed. Bouteflika's multiple hand movements (eight, in total) were apparently the work of some creative editing (Barthes, 2013). Canal Algérie had filmed the meeting with different cameras and looped footage from each of the president's three hand movements to make him appear less catatonic. In his second post-stroke television appearance, the president is shown discussing his candidacy for a total of 15 seconds. ‘Le Petit Journal’ once again exposed the editing team's trucage. In the middle of a phrase that began ‘Je dépose le dossier de candidature’ [I'm filing the application], the camera angle switches abruptly and Bouteflika is shown inexplicably seated in a new position – two takes were apparently needed to paste together a coherent sentence.

Oranais author Kamel Daoud noted that ‘dans les trois phrases, deux étaient proches du langage, une était a la frontiere du SMS […] on est l'unique pays au monde ou l'argument d'un candidat n'est pas un programme mais la preuve qu'il est vivant. La seule nation qui va se contenter de 37 mots pour élire un homme. C'est la campagne électorale la plus courte du monde. 15 secondes’ (Daoud, 2014). While there was considerable outrage at the prospect of five more years of Bouteflika, there was little in the way of shock. Algerians had become accustomed to the absurdity of their country's political theatre. Power in Algeria – le pouvoir – is not restricted to one man. The army, the security services, the ministers, the state oil company and various oligarchs enjoy rotating places at the table when decisions are made, and no one is ever certain who exactly is present.