ALGERIA – Described as a farce or a masquerade, the Algerian presidential election takes place this Saturday, September 7. But its outcome is not expected to be a surprise: the outgoing president Abdelmadjid Tebboune, aged 78, should be re-elected, after an amorphous campaign.
Two candidates are opposing him, as you can see in the video at the top of the article : Abdelaali Hassani, leader of the main Islamist party, the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), and the progressive Youcef Aouchiche, whose party, the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS), had boycotted the polls since 1999.
Few candidates, whose only merit is to give the illusion of a democratic debate. Because the others have not managed to collect the number of sponsorships provided for by the electoral law, or have preferred to boycott the vote as long as the conditions for a free election are not met.
“Tebboune has sidestepped the issue of democratic transition”
Elected in December 2019 with a high abstention rate (60%), Abdelmadjid Tebboune had to face the hostility of the Hirak: a pro-democracy protest movement, which had precipitated the end of the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April of the same year.
But when he “has dismissed the issue of democratic transition demanded by millions of citizens (in more than 100 demonstrations from February 2019, editor’s note), he has definitively renounced a break in the Algerian political system”Hasni Abidi, director of the CERMAM study center in Geneva, explained to Agence France Presse. This is not “not the change at the head of the country that brings Algeria into a new era”continues the expert, referring to a president faced with “the difficulty of making a profound change”.
Since the Hirak, the movement’s activists have been repressed and the state has brought the media into line. Reporters Without Borders continues to warn today about the conditions of the journalistic profession and states that “The mere mention of corruption and the repression of protests can earn journalists threats and arrests.”
If Tebboune chose as a campaign slogan “New Algeria”many observers believe that there will be no break as long as the democratic transition demanded in 2019 does not take place.
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