After being declared the winner of the election, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune joined his opponents in criticizing the country’s Electoral Authority for announcing results that contradicted turnout figures and previous local counts.
The acting leader Abdelmadjid Tebboune will once again preside over Algeria among the complaints of irregularities that tarnish what once seemed a landslide re-election of the 78-year-old head of state.
The Algerian Independent National Electoral Authority (ANIE) announced on Sunday that Tebboune had obtained 94.7% of the votes of Saturday, far surpassing its rivalsthe Islamist Abdelali Hassani Cherif, who only obtained 3.2%, and the socialist Youcef Aouchiche, who only obtained 2.2%.
Hours later, Tebboune joined his opponents to question the communication of resultsand the three campaigns jointly issued a statement in which they accused the country’s top electoral official of announce contradictory results.
In a country where elections have historically been carefully choreographed affairsyou are amazing questions about irregularities They shocked the Algerians, who expected Tebboune to win relatively calmly.
It is unclear what will happen after the three candidates question the irregularities and if these will give rise to judicial challenges or will delay the final certification of the result.
Efforts to project legitimacy
The count reported on Sunday gave Tebboune a total percentage of votes much superior to 87% that Vladimir Putin obtained in the elections Russians in March and the 92% that Ilham Aliyev achieved in February in Azerbaijan.
But the efforts of Tebboune and the members of his government for promoting the electoral participation to project legitimacy They appeared to fall short, with fewer than one in four voters participating.
Election officials reported Sunday that 5.6 million of the approximately 24 million voters in the country They had come to vote. Such a high abstention ratewhich is not yet official, would surpass that of the 2019 presidential electionin which 39.9% of the electorate participated.
Authorities did not explain why they had earlier announced a participation of 48% of voters in the moment of closing of the polls. Before the three candidates came together to challenge the discrepancy, the two Tebboune aspirants They expressed concern about it, citing their own accounts.
Aouchiche called it “strange.” Ahmed Sadok, Cherif’s campaign manager, criticized the delays and the way the figure was calculated. “It’s a shame. It’s a attack on the image of Algeriawho will become the laughing stock of nations,” Sadok declared earlier in the day.
Pressure on election workers
He also stated that the vote count records had not been delivered to the candidates’ representatives and that the party had registered cases of voting by groups of representatives and putting pressure on election workers to they will inflate certain figures.
The allegations of irregularities put an end to an electoral season that has outraged activists and civil society groups. Human rights defenders denounced the repressive environment of the campaign and harassment and persecution of members of opposition parties, the media and civil society groups.
Some denounced these elections as an exercise in mere approval that can only strengthen the ‘status quo’. Amnesty International last week condemned the “brutal repression” of human rights in Algeria, including rights to freedom of expressionpeaceful assembly and association, on the eve of the presidential elections of the country.
Before the candidates challenged the results, both the supporters and detractors of Tebboune they had taken out conclusions from the results. Pro-Tebboune university professor Abdellaoui Djazouli declared on public television that the result was a resounding endorsement of Tebboune’s program.
“The president has more legitimacy to continue your action in order to better establish his project for the new Algeria,” he declared on public television. But His overwhelming victory fueled criticism of pro-democracy activists, who have long considered elections as tools that the country’s political elites have used to give the appearance of popular support.
ADVERTISINGA “lesson in democracy” for Algerians
Many stated that the strongest message from the elections came from those who decided to abstain out of fear that the elections would do nothing but strengthen and legitimize ‘le pouvoir’term used to describe the elites supported by the military who run the country.
“The vast majority of the Algerian people have just given ‘le pouvoir’ a lesson in democracydeclared Nassira Amour, professor and prominent figure of the Algerian pro-democracy movement. “The majority has not voted. This electoral masquerade It is a victory for the Hirak,” Amour added, referring to the pro-democracy movement that swept the country in 2019.
That year, after Hirak protesters flooded the streets of Algerian cities, the military overthrew President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after two decades in power. The interim government that replaced him listened to the appeals from military leaders to hold elections at the end of that year, which angered protesters, who saw the acceleration of elections as a way to calm discontent and avoid the demands of a government led by civilians and not military.
Tebboune, considered the military’s candidate, won his first term in a widely boycotted election, in which crowds ransacked polling stations and The Police broke up demonstrations. Despite his first proposals and promises to listen and make way for a “New Algeria”, Hirak protesters continued weekly demonstrations demanding deeper reforms.
ADVERTISINGAlgeria is the largest country in Africa by area and, with almost 45 million inhabitants, it is the second most populated on the continent after South Africa which cwill hold presidential elections in 2024a year in which more than 50 elections are held around the world, involving more than half of the world’s population.
