Voting closed Saturday night in Algeria’s presidential election, with incumbent President Abdel-Majjid Tebbun expected to easily win a second term despite concerns over low turnout – he wrote az Al Jazera.
Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. local time on Saturday morning in the North African country, which has more than 24 million registered voters. On September 2, more than 800,000 Algerians abroad, many of them in France, started voting. The authorities extended the voting time, the voting closed at 8 pm on Saturday.
The 78-year-old Tebbun’s government has been accused of using new laws to stifle dissent, but he still enjoys a strong advantage to defeat his two challengers – Abdeláli Hassani Cherif, 57, and Joucef Ocsic, 41.
While 15 candidates tried to enter the competition, only Hasszani Cserif and Ocsicse collected enough signatures to qualify. The election, which Tebbun’s office postponed from the originally planned date in December, failed to arouse enthusiasm, partly because of the summer heat. According to political commentator Mohamed Hennád, the result of the election is predetermined due to the restrictive conditions of the campaign. It’s “nothing but farce,” he wrote in a post on X.
Visible participation, increasing the participation rate, is Tebbun’s main challenge, since in 2019, when he won his first term, it did not reach 40 percent. The participation in the 2021 parliamentary elections was even lower, around 30 percent.
The president wants to achieve a significant turnout
– said Haszni Abidi, an analyst at the Geneva-based CERMAM study center. “This is his main problem,” he told the AFP news agency.
The low turnout figures for 2019 and 2021 came amid pro-democracy protests that toppled Tebbun’s predecessor, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, before heightened policing and the jailing of hundreds of people.
With more than half of Algeria’s population of 45 million young people, each candidate promises to improve living standards and reduce dependence on hydrocarbons. Tebbun praised economic success since his first term, promising more jobs and higher wages in the country, which is Africa’s largest natural gas exporter. In a second term, Tebbun is expected to maintain a policy of boosting the country’s energy exports and implementing limited pro-business reforms, while maintaining lavish subsidies and tightly limiting internal dissent.
In the past, investors were not confident to invest in Algeria, but this is starting to change as our laws change and our image changes
– said economist Búbaker Szellami to Al Jazeera. Tebbun’s two challengers argued that he would give Algerians more freedom. Ocsicse said he was committed to releasing prisoners of conscience through amnesty and revising unjust laws, including those related to the media and terrorism. Hassani Cserif argued for the return of “freedoms that have disappeared in recent years”. The preliminary results can be made public as early as Saturday evening, the election authority, ANIE, will announce the official results on Sunday at the latest.
According to the constitution adopted in 1989 and most recently amended in 2020, Algeria is headed by the president of the republic, who is directly elected for five years and can be re-elected once. The last presidential election, held on December 12, 2019, with a very low turnout and boycotted by most of the opposition, was won by former Prime Minister Abdel-Majjid Tebbun, who was inaugurated on December 19. The legislative power is vested in the bicameral parliament. One-third of the members of the upper house, the 174-member National Council, are appointed by the president, two-thirds are elected by the electoral body consisting of representatives of local councils for six years, and half of the members are re-elected every three years. The 407 members of the lower house, the National People’s Council, are directly elected in a list system for five years.
The last early parliamentary election was held on June 12, 2021 with a turnout of 23.03 percent, which is a historic low in the country. The National Liberation Front won the vote, obtaining 98 seats in the 407-member parliament. The Peaceful Society Movement finished in second place with 65 mandates, the Democratic National Compact came in third with 58 mandates. (The vote was boycotted by the opposition Hirak movement, founded in February 2019.) In Algeria, the president is elected in a two-round system, if no candidate receives the majority of votes in the first round, a second round is held. The current president, Abdel-Majjid Tebbun, ran for a second term in the current election.
Cover photo: Incumbent Algerian President Abdel-Majjid Tebbun leaves the polling station after voting in Algiers on September 7, 2024 (Photo: AFP/Facebook/Algeria Presidency)
Source: magyarnemzet.hu
