In Algeria, the 2024 presidential elections are a farce, and not for the right reasons. The low turnout — 26.12% at 5:00 p.m. yesterday, Saturday — forced the authorities to play a new card: extend the voting operation by an hour, hoping to gain a few percentage points to save face..
It is easy to imagine the desperately empty ballot boxes, with the ballots of phantom voters slow to venture in. Perhaps it was thought that the Algerians, with a wave of a magic wand, would rush into the polling stations at exactly 7:01 p.m., carried away by a sudden surge of patriotism.
Lowest turnout in Algeria’s history
The reason for this extension is none other than the lowest participation rate in the history of Algeria. Indeed, at 5 p.m., the participation rate was 26.45% at the national level and 18.31% at the level of the national community established abroad, i.e. an overall rate of nearly 26.12%.
This is the lowest rate of all pluralist presidential elections in the history of Algeria; almost 7 points less than the election of 12/12/2019 which was until then the one with the lowest participation. The comparison with the 2019 election makes you smile (or cry). At that time, the polling stations had already experienced humiliation with a participation rate of 33%.
Today, with 7 points less, we are close to the absolute record of citizen disaffection. It is difficult, in fact, to imagine that Algerians suddenly felt the irrepressible need to support a candidate they never really chose.
With this extension maneuver, the authorities, guided by the ANIE (National Independent Authority for Elections), have demonstrated ingenious creativity to delay the inevitable: a massive rejection of the ballot boxes and a bitter failure to cover up.
Deserted offices and 12/12/2019 syndrome
A palpable unease reigns at the top of the state. The turnout in the elections is well below the regime’s expectations. At the top, technocrats are agitated, frantically recalculating and comparing the results between the wilayas, hoping to produce figures that might seem credible.
But the reality is too obvious, the turnout is catastrophic, and no statistical manipulation will be able to mask the extent of popular disaffection. The regime finds itself facing a disappointment much greater than it had anticipated. The lowest rate in history is indeed there, a sign that the “legitimacy” of the senile next door hangs on a thread as fragile as his political promises, which saw him emerge.
But the main thing is to save face, and above all to avoid the shadow of ridicule hanging over the upper echelons of power. So, as if to ward off this predicted disaster, the ANIE is offering citizens one more hour to do their duty. A desperate attempt to inject an ounce of life into a moribund election.
The cynicism of the situation, however, cannot escape anyone. Far from waking up to the call of this extra hour, Algerians seem to be sinking a little deeper into resigned indifference. Because, deep down, why prolong the torture of a vote whose results, deep down, are already written?
The real vote? Massive abstention
What was truly expressed during this extended voting day was disavowal. The turnout speaks louder than any ballot box: a rejection of the system, a refusal to grant even an ounce of legitimacy to an election experienced as a sham. In this political theater, abstention is not a silence, but a cry. A cry that resonates, despite the desperate attempts of the government to fill the absence of voices.
Ultimately, the real election was played out well before the extended closing time. It was played out in the hearts and minds of a people who, faced with an empty ballot box, prefer to stay home. An election in which the biggest winner is, once again, abstention.
The presidential election in Algeria has turned into a veritable shadow theater. After the polls close, no official figures are published, and the authority guiding the ANIE, Mohamed Charfi, usually omnipresent, has disappeared from the screens. The low turnout puts the regime in an embarrassing position.
Despite attempts to inflate the numbers by mysteriously doubling rates throughout the day, reports abound of empty offices. The winner, unsurprisingly, remains the same. A symbol of an unchanged system.
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