Music blares out of a shop front decked with flags in the centre of Algiers. Inside, people mill around looking at an exhibition of hundreds of photographs of Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, their president since 1999 who is standing for re-election on Thursday.

The pictures show the 72-year-old leader at every stage of his career: from schoolboy to freedom fighter against France, then as foreign minister and lastly at the helm of this huge north African country, the source of 15 per cent of Europe’s natural gas supplies.