Algeria, a major exporter of oil and gas with a youthful population of 37 million, is led by a 76-year-old who claims he fought in the war of independence. Abdelaziz Bouteflika thus belongs to a generation that legitimises its hegemony over the country on the basis of its valour in the 1962 war of independence from France.
Mr Bouteflika, who is now clinging to power, was named minister of youth, sport, and tourism at the age of 26 under President Ahmed Ben Bella. He became foreign minister in mysterious circumstances after the 1963 murder of the incumbent, Mohamed Khemisti, the first of a long series of assassinations after independence.
Mr Bouteflika was the schemer behind the bloodless 1965 coup that toppled Ben Bella and brought Houari Boumediene to power.
When Boumediene succumbed to a rare blood disease in 1979, Mr Bouteflika thought he was the ideal replacement. But the Army top brass did not agree, and he had to spend 20 years in the wilderness.
He was convicted in 1983 for embezzling $23 million (Dh84m) from Algeria's embassies while foreign minister from 1963 to 1978. Two years before the verdict, he had gone into comfortable self-imposed exile, mostly in Switzerland and the Gulf.
After the tragic riots of October 1988, the invalidation of the first free parliamentary elections in 1991, the coup in 1992, and the subsequent civil war that killed 200,000 people, the military turned to him as a frontman who could consolidate the status quo.
So Mr Bouteflika returned home in 1999 and was the sole candidate to contest the presidency; six others pulled out because they were persuaded the ballot would be rigged. He was thus elected president, with the patronage of Algeria's mighty military. It still runs the country, but ever since 1999 Mr Bouteflika has been a key element in maintaining the authoritarian regime's facade.
After his first election he promised to be "more than three-quarters of a president," and struggled to build his influence over the army. But real authority in the country remains diffused and opaque, and is often called le pouvoir, French for " the powers that be".
Mr Bouteflika preferred loyalty over competence in his dealings with his military benefactors. He promoted a myriad of officers from his native region, while his interior minister recruited thousands of new police officers. Under Mr Bouteflika Algeria slammed the door on genuine democratic reforms and became a police state.
Trying to bring closure to the Algerian civil war, Mr Bouteflika institutionalised impunity by granting amnesty, in 2006, to security officials accused by NGOs of human rights abuses, and to scores of Islamist insurgents.
Since the civil war period Algeria has indeed remained rather calm, even through the regional turbulence of the Arab Spring.
Still, there are persistent protests over unemployment and corruption. Last January saw an unparalleled wave of protest in Ouargla, a city 600km south of Algiers, site of the country's oil and gas wealth but a region of abject poverty.
Until recently, the country's complacent rulers had literally bought social peace. Le pouvoir has shielded itself with promises of change, generous disbursements, and glittery projects such as the largest mosque in Africa - rather than building, say, the biggest hospital.
Mr Bouteflika revoked the constitution's two-term limit, to extend his stay in office beyond 2009, and had been expected to run for a fourth term in the 2014 elections.
But he now is contemplating uncertain times. Since his re-election in 2009 he has rarely been seen in public, and he returned to Algeria on July 16 in a wheelchair, after spending 80 days in the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris after a stroke. His health problems are widely seen to have ended his chances of seeking another term.
This was not Mr Bouteflika's first visit to a French hospital. In 2005, he was rushed to France for surgery, supposedly for a bleeding stomach ulcer; a leaked US diplomatic cable said he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Yet his most recent convalescence there has caused outrage. To see a "decoloniser" being treated in a hospital of the former colonial power, 51 years after independence, perfectly illustrated independence gone astray.
Chafiq Mesbah, a retired intelligence colonel turned analyst, says "Mr Bouteflika will not be resuming his activities".
But although Mr Bouteflika is not indispensable, the rule of law is, and chaos threatens to follow him. Illustrative of the problem is the corruption scandal involving his brother Said, and the former energy minister Chakib Khelil, implicated in huge abuses at Algeria's national oil company Sonatrach.
That such a story could surface shows that the countdown has already started for the president. Another scandal under investigation in Italy, Switzerland, and Canada as well as Algeria and perhaps other places, involves three nephews of Mohamed Bedjaoui, a former minister of foreign affairs. They are suspected of pocketing $264 million in bribes and kickbacks on eight Sonatrach contracts with the Italian oil firm Saipem.
This end-of-regime atmosphere has triggered fierce intrigues among army generals and co-opted businessmen. These tumultuous times are similar to those in Tunisia during the final days of Habib Bourguiba's rule, in 1987: political paralysis, economic uncertainty, and social chaos.
Will Mr Bouteflika step down? I doubt it. He did not rush back to power after 20 years of ostracism just to walk out.
Mr Bouteflika is the last of a long line of Arab leaders determined to remain in office for life. He cannot be the paradigm shift. But the Algerian regime he is leaving behind will not be capable of bringing about the changes the country needs so badly.
Dr Abdelkader Cheref is a visiting professor at The State University of New York at Potsdam
