Former candidate for Algeria’s presidency, retired General Ali Ghadiri, expressed great optimism for the future after the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, he said he would run again in the next elections, as he was among the first candidates to the elections which were supposed to be held this month before Bouteflika canceled them. “I will run in the next election. I said I came to break the system. If the people elect me, I will complete breaking the system,” he said. Ghadiri said that the next stage could go smoothly if the constitutional provisions were respected. “I hold on to the legitimacy and the law,” he insisted. The Algerian figure highly commended the military establishment. “We should not confuse between the state and the regime,” he noted. “The state has institutions, including the National Peoples Army. The army is not a militia, and it is in the service of the nation, the people and the state…This is the reality. If it weren’t for the army, those (around Bouteflika), would have done what they wanted in the country, and they would have went for a fifth term, and perhaps a permanent term.” Asked about his position on the demands for the return of the Islamic Salvation Front to the political scene if he was elected president, Ghadiri said: “The Second Republic is not just a slogan… This is a political, cultural, social and economic pattern, and a new philosophy and relationship between the ruler and the ruled.” “But I tell the Islamists that they have been defeated politically and militarily, and they are now aware that they have no place but in a democratic Algeria, within democratic rules that guarantee the exercise of their rights within the framework of a national democratic project,” he added.