Politics & Power Quote by Abdelaziz Bouteflika

“Reaffirmed” is the tell: this isn’t a vow so much as a maintenance announcement, the verbal equivalent of putting fresh paint on an old slogan. Coming from Abdelaziz Bouteflika, “national unity” lands with the full weight of Algeria’s post-civil-war bargain, where stability was often purchased by muting conflict rather than resolving it. The line is calibrated for a country that remembers the 1990s “Black Decade,” when politics turned deadly and the state’s legitimacy became inseparable from its promise to prevent relapse.

The specific intent is conservative in the literal sense: to preserve the center. Bouteflika’s presidency leaned heavily on the idea that he, personally, embodied reconciliation and continuity. So “political will” functions as reassurance to domestic power blocs (the military, entrenched party networks, business elites) that the machinery will keep running, and as a signal to ordinary citizens that the state’s top priority remains order. It’s also a message outward: Algeria will not be a “problem state” in a region where fractures invite foreign meddling.

The subtext is what’s left unsaid: unity from whom, and on whose terms? “Work towards” sounds participatory, but it can just as easily mean managing dissent, narrowing acceptable opposition, and rebranding control as consensus. The phrase’s vagueness is strategic. It offers a morally unassailable goal while dodging the hard questions of pluralism, accountability, and the distribution of power. In Bouteflika’s political language, unity isn’t a destination; it’s a justification.