Ekip
08 September 2016•Update: 08 September 2016
By Abdul Razak bin Abdullah
ALGIERS
In a rare show of public activity on Thursday, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika -- who since 2013 has suffered from the effects of a blood clot in the brain -- inaugurated a conference center west of capital Algiers, according to Algerian state television.
"President Bouteflika on Thursday inaugurated the conference center… in the presence of Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Chinese Ambassador to Algeria Yang Guangyu," state television reported.
Government-run television channels broadcast images of the new center but refrained from showing any images of the inauguration ceremony.
Bouteflika has seldom appeared outside the walls of the presidential palace since he suffered a blood clot in the brain in April 2013 and was taken for treatment to a Paris hospital.
After returning to Algeria in July the same year, he carried out his presidential duties mostly in the form of issuing decrees and holding meetings with senior state officials and foreign dignitaries.
On the few occasions that he did appear, he did so in a wheelchair.
He now regularly travels to French and Swiss hospitals for medical checkups.
Bouteflika, 79, came to power in 1999. In 2014, he won a fourth five-year term in a presidential election in which he reportedly clinched 82 percent of the vote.
Algerian opposition parties demand that early elections be held, saying Bouteflika is unable to carry out his presidential functions.
Pro-Bouteflika parties, for their part, reject these calls, insisting that the president is capable of performing his duties as normal until his term expires in 2019.
