“Algeria is an epic, huge, black hole. No one knows anything about.” A very good friend of mine told me this, not long ago. Both of us have covered Egypt post-Hosni Mubarak and been to hundreds of demonstrations. Back then, I asked myself countless times about the day something similar happens in Algeria.

That day came. Things are still unclear about who organized these demonstrations. When I went to protest on February 22nd, I was a bit afraid. I had never protested in my own country. Because of a combination of a 1991 law that puts restrictions on demonstrations and to a 2001 government decree that bans protests in the capital for “security concerns,” anti-government protests are rare in Algeria.

I was pleasantly surprised. Algeria’s streets were flooded with hundreds of thousands of protesters two Fridays in a row; lawyers, students, and journalists took the streets peacefully to express frustration with the current ailing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika seeking re-election for a fifth term.

The country’s economy had been stagnating and suffering from general dissatisfactions from the population. Inflation rates have gone up, foreign reserves down, the currency’s exchange value tanked making it very difficult for many families to sustain a living. Even more, the delusion with the President has become a delusion with the FLN and with the regime more generally.

Bouteflika, who came to power in 1999, has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013. He is reportedly still in Switzerland after undergoing medical checks there over a week ago. Despite health challenges and public outcry, Bouteflika will still be running for a fifth term and in a letter attributed to him, promises major reforms to the constitution and the political system.

But the protesters demand radical change.