Since suffering a stroke in 2013, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been ill and unable to move. His last speech was made a year before that happened, and in it he promised that “his generation – that of the decolonisers – is done, dusted” and that he would pass the torch to the new generation. The speech was aimed at placating the under-30s, who make up the biggest demographic in Algeria but who have no political representation in the country.

Bouteflika did not keep his promise and is still in power. The president is now invisible, ill, mute and has been replaced by a portrait that his supporters parade throughout the country and embrace in front of the cameras. But that has not stopped him and his men – his brother, the chief of armed forces and a handful of loyal businessmen and ministers from his region – setting their sights on a surreal fifth mandate.

For weeks now Algerians have been turning out in towns across the country to voice their anger at this scenario, but Bouteflika’s team is resisting all calls to step aside. So where does his “power” come from? And what are the reasons why he could ultimately prove weak?

There are several reasons for the regime’s arrogance. The first is oil and gas and the revenues they bring. Even if prices fall, social subsidies will almost never be affected. Algerians who are fed, housed and protected could only ever – goes the argument – vote for Bouteflika, even in his absence.

Second, the regime still exercises control over large parts of the Algerian public sphere, from the police to the unions and the media. It is a monarchy that has in recent years taken to violently oppressing opponents, old partisans, and above all young bloggers and internet users.

The third reason – and this is what really makes the great invalid of Algeria think he can live forever – is the regime’s control over the army. (Ever since he took power, Bouteflika has carried out a discreet kind of blackmail on the high-ranking officers of today via the files of Algeria’s bloody civil war, with its “disappeared” and its tortured.)

The last reason stems from the trauma of war: a decade, from 1990 to 2000, of massacres, oppression and attacks which left a deep mark on Algerians. The memory of that chaos was triggered by the Arab Spring uprisings, and again last month, before the big demonstrations, Bouteflika’s apparatchiks all had the same argument: if you Algerians rise up, you’ll be heading for another Syria or Libya.

The protesters will not forget this blackmail and have rejected it through a thousand slogans.

The regime is betting that most of those who have taken to the streets will eventually succumb to fear and fatigue. And if the security argument does not work, the clan of Algiers is relying on another: the absence of an alternative. The opposition of the street has a sublime passion. It is a coming together that has never been seen before in Algeria. It represents a rediscovered pride and a voice that has taken the world by surprise.

But it remains a collection of slogans, an amorphous expression of rage without alternatives. There are no arbiters between the two sides and the regime is proposing an order that the opposition, despite its legitimacy, can’t possibly represent. Playing for time, it could end up accepting the departure of Bouteflika, but not the collapse of the entire system.

For their part, the protesters don’t just want the presidential elections to be called off but a total change – a second republic. The slogans are clear: “Get out, FLN!” “Out with the system!” “Give us back our country!”

So the regime is still there, not because it’s strong but because the opposition is not yet concrete enough.

Could the regime collapse? Yes, and very quickly. What that requires is the emergence of arbitrators to secure the departure of the regime’s apparatchiks, their families and their capital. The regime has been making repeated gaffes and seems finally to have embraced a strategy of strict silence: no statements, no provocations of protesters and no repression. While the protesters insist that their protests will remain peaceful, the regime is aware there is also the possibility of disobedience if the order is given to fire on people’s legs, as the army did in October 1988 when the Algerian people took to the streets to call for democracy. That act of repression caused hundreds of deaths, and was followed by a terrible civil war. Today the army would not obey. That’s what everyone believes.

Bouteflika’s health is another reason why the regime risks a speedy collapse. From an invisible, impotent man replaced by a familial regency we now have a man who is even more ill and stuck in hospital in Geneva, his condition reportedly life-threatening. Much as the regime attempts to quash it, this detail has been published on Facebook and other social media networks. In the words of one young protester: “We were blind and deaf and God sent us his prophet: the internet.” This generation has lived through neither the war of independence nor the civil war – just the freedom of social media. Today this freedom has sprung from screens into the street. The internet has been the great giver of freedom of speech in Algeria and the regime has realised it too late. It tried to slow it down during the first days of the protests, but it was useless. Algerians – hyper-connected – found out that they could have not only a Facebook page but a country.

The future? It will be decided this week. The current situation is untenable for both sides. So it’s worth following this neo-spring which, to use its slogans, wants “neither beard, nor kamis [shalwar kameez], nor police”.

Kamel Daoud is an Algerian journalist and writer whose 2013 novel The Meursault Investigation won the Goncourt prize for a first novel