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When the head of Algeria's army declared the president was too ill to rule he revealed where the real power lies in Algeria, writes James McDougall, an expert on the history of Algeria.

For Algeria's 82-year old former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, it is "game over", as slogans on the country's streets have been saying since mid-February.

But his resignation, announced on Tuesday, does not mean the end of the protests that have seen hundreds of thousands of people, of all ages, peacefully demonstrating for seven weeks.

Early in the movement demonstrators' slogans demanded "No fifth mandate".

They were rejecting Mr Bouteflika's candidacy for re-election to a fifth term in the presidency he had occupied since 1999.

But from the start, the protests were about more than Mr Bouteflika.

The whole "system", or "pouvoir", had to go, placards and online posts demanded.

So when the army's chief of staff, Lt Gen Ahmed Gaid Salah, announced on 26 March that article 102 of the constitution - allowing the president's removal on grounds of ill health - should be applied, protesters had won something, but their response was cautious.

The following Friday, marchers in the country's second city, Oran, carried signs saying: "102 is half the answer, the whole gang has to go."

The hashtags now were: "Leave means Leave" and "Throw them all out".

Protesters in the capital, Algiers, chanted: "Bouteflika get out, and take Gaid Salah with you."

A second statement from Gen Gaid Salah demanded the "immediate" application of article 102.

Mr Bouteflika's resignation followed a few hours later.

At 79-years old, Gen Gaid Salah, like Mr Bouteflika, is one of the last remaining veterans of Algeria's revolutionary generation who fought in the war of independence against France from 1954 to 1962.

Ever since independence, the army has been the real centre of power in Algeria, arbitrating factional conflicts among politicians and business interests, making and unmaking presidents.

Mr Bouteflika himself was brought to the presidency in 1999 by a group of generals who had prosecuted a brutal war against militant Islamist insurgents since 1992.

After that conflict wound down, the army preserved its power, acting behind the scenes to distribute influence through Algeria's multiparty politics and the "system" of factional interests that it represents.

But the army is not the only player in that system, and in the early 2000s Mr Bouteflika removed the generals who had sponsored him.

A presidential "clan", including wealthy private businessmen, gravitated around Mr Bouteflika and his brother Said.

After Mr Bouteflika suffered an incapacitating stroke in 2013, Said was increasingly identified as being in control of access and influence at the centre of power.