• Adelaziz Bouteflika joined the National Liberation Army (ALN) in 1956 and was given the nom de guerre of Si Abdelkader, which remained his nickname together with another one, the Moroccan, which refers to his birthplace.
• After Algeria's independence in 1962, he became deputy of Tlemcen in the Constituent Assembly and Minister for Youth and Sport in the government led by Ahmed Ben Bella.
• In 1963  he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs and remained in this position until the death of President Houari Boumedienne in 1978, of who he was considered to be the right arm.
• In 1979, he expected to succeed Boumedienne as President but the Army decided otherwise and chose Chadli Bendjedid instead. Although he then became Minister of State, he was progressively pushed away and left the political arena in 1981.
• In 1983, he left the country and stayed in the UAE, in France and Switzerland.
• After six years abroad, he finally came back and joined the Central Committee of the National Liberation Font (FLN) in 1989.
• In January 1994, Bouteflika refused the Army’s proposal to succeed the assassinated president Mohamed Boudiaf, presumably to avoid asking the support of the political parties. Instead, General Liamine Zeroual became President.
• In April 1999, Bouteflika finally ran for the presidential elections and was elected officially with 74% of the votes, after the 6 other candidates pulled out on the eve of the elections , denouncing vote-rigging in favour of Bouteflika, who benefited from the support of the army.
• On the 8th of April 2004, Bouteflika was re-elected President of the Republic with 83.49% of the votes against 5 other candidates.  Ali Benflis, his main rival and former right-hand, as well as two of the other candidates, Adballah Djaballah and Saïd Sadi, issued a joint statement denouncing fraud “at all levels”. However, the 120 international observers monitoring the poll did not signal any irregularities, and Bouteflika’s re-election was rapidly welcomed by the French and American presidents. For the first time since the independence of Algeria, the army publicly affirmed its neutrality and non-involvement in the electoral process.

Source: European Institute for Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation 2004