Young activists talk about their hopes of unseating an ageing leader and governing elite they see as out of touch

A new generation of Algerian protesters is to intensify demonstrations that have rocked the north African country in recent weeks, as they try to force the veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to abandon his bid to win a fifth five-year term in power at elections next month.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets on Friday across Algeria to demand that Bouteflika, 82 – who has not been seen in public for many years and is currently in Geneva for medical treatment – withdraw from the polls.

In the biggest outpouring of dissent seen in Algeria for many decades, a new wave of young activists has emerged in a country in which more than two-thirds of the population are under 30. They are vowing to keep up the pressure on Bouteflika until he agrees to give up the presidential bid.

Tin Hinane el-Kadi, 26, a member of the protest movement Mouwatana, said: “We’re tired of having this unrepresentative leadership … [The prime minister] recently talked about ‘that dotcom thing I don’t get’, [and] most of our ministers don’t have email addresses. There’s a big generational gap.”

Nourhane Atmani, a 20-year-old student in Algiers, the capital, said: “Everyone is watching and waiting for [the government’s] next move. But we as a people were hoping they would surrender already. We’re ready to cause more pressure.”

Raouf Farrah, from Les Jeunes Engagés (Activist Youth), a collective that has been prominent in the movement, said the scale of the protests had confirmed a deep desire for radical change. “It’s not just one part of society asking for this – we’ve seen men, women, children, families, older people out on the streets,” he said.

So far the protests have been almost entirely peaceful.

In the past the Algerian authorities have relied on social spending and subsidies funded by the country’s oil revenues to quell unrest. However, declining production and lower international oil prices have significantly reduced state revenues.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters in Algiers. So far the demonstrations have been peaceful. Photograph: Ryad Kramdi/AFP/Getty Images

Many of the current ruling elite came to power after leading Algerians in a brutal war for independence from France between 1954 and 1962. Bouteflika, a veteran of the conflict, was made a minister at the age of 25 in its aftermath. The ruling party, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), has long argued that its key role in the independence struggle grants it the right to remain in power.

However, the new generation are reviving a long tradition of popular resistance to authoritarian rule. Slogans shouted by the protesters last week recalled some used by demonstrators in 1962, said James McDougall, a professor of history at Oxford University and author of a book on the history of Algeria.

He said: “There is a deep-rooted radical popular democratic tradition. There has been a collectivity [in the recent protests] that explains their extraordinary atmosphere. There has been a joyous rediscovery of something that was thought to have been lost.”

The early history of independent Algeria – from the struggle against French rule through its role as a leader of developing-world revolutionary activism in the 1960s and 70s – continues to inform public and private conversations. Next week in the city of Constantine, where there were large demonstrations on Friday, there is a screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, portraying the bitter struggle between nationalist insurgents and French troops in the capital.

The protesters have been encouraged by an editorial in the powerful military’s in-house magazine describing how the army and the Algerian people both belong to “a single fatherland” which soldiers had sworn to preserve and defend.

“The history of Algeria is rich with episodes demonstrating the people’s attachment to liberty and independence,” it said, evoking the “glorious revolution of 1954”.

In the early 1990s the cancellation of an election that Islamists had seemed set to win triggered a civil war in which at least 150,000 people died, as extremists and security forces fought for control of the country. Traumatic memories of the violence has until now made many Algerians reluctant to risk further political upheaval.

The president and other top officials have repeatedly invoked the “dark decade” and the instability that followed uprisings across the Arab world in 2011 as a warning to anyone expressing dissent or seeking reform.

But though there has been limited unrest at a national level, there have been many local protests, often sparked by a failure of the state to provide basic services and aggravated by high unemployment and an acute housing shortage.

McDougall said that Bouteflika’s bid to stay in power was the “federating factor for which a subterranean popular movement was waiting”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is now rarely seen in public. Photograph: Sidali Djarboub/AP

Demonstrators have sought to distance themselves from any violence, and there has been almost none. Social media pages told marchers to come equipped only with “love, faith, Algerian flags and roses”, and to take litter away with them.

“We are peaceful – the word you hear most at protests is ‘peaceful! peaceful!’ We had our lessons on this. It doesn’t pay to be violent or have protests turn violent. I’ve never seen one million people be this peaceful – we want people to know it’s more than safe,” said Yasmine Bouchene, 29, speaking after Friday’s protests.

Student Marwa Saïdi, 21, who joined demonstrators in Algiers last week, said it was crucial that women were taking their place in the front rank of the protests. “It’s really important for women to be out in the streets … We want to show we will participate in the changes that will happen,” she said.

Further demonstrations will add to the pressure on the ruling elite in Algeria but also risk fractures among the broad alliance of independent social groups and actors which has so far avoided designating any leaders.

“I’m not sure the movement is ready to designate a spokesperson. We need a mediator. It’s the missing piece. I think we’re reaching a stage where a mediator, a national one, could be useful. The stakes are so high on both sides,” said Farrah.

Nearly 200 people were arrested on Friday after sporadic clashes with police when the main demonstrations had ended.

Hannah Rae Armstrong, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said there was a growing realisation among Algerians that the authorities did not have a “vice-like grip”, as many had thought.

“Algerians are experimenting,” she said. “They are realising that you can open the doors of the cage and step outside, even if you don’t know what it is going to look like or feel like beyond the bars.”