Presidential Election: Polling stations closed in Algeria, low turnout

Voting operations ended Saturday in Algeria for a presidential election where the outgoing head of state Abdelmadjid Tebboune, running for a second term, is considered the big favorite, the main issue being the turnout rate.

The polling stations closed at 8:00 p.m. (9:00 p.m. in Switzerland) after voting was extended for an hour longer than planned. At 5:00 p.m. local time, the turnout was 26.46%, down seven points from 2019 (33.06%), according to the electoral authority Anie. The turnout figure for the day is expected in the evening, and the results no later than Sunday.

In December 2019, abstention broke records (60%) during the first election won by Abdelmadjid Tebboune with 58% of the vote, while massive pro-democracy demonstrations were in full swing and many parties boycotted the vote.

Low adversity

Facing Abdelmadjid Tebboune are two little-known candidates: Abdelaali Hassani, a 57-year-old engineer and head of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP, the main Islamist party), and Youcef Aouchiche, 41, a former journalist and senator, head of the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS, the oldest opposition party).

A re-election of Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 78, is all the more expected since four major parties support him, including the National Liberation Front (FLN, former single party). “The winner is known in advance”, given “the small number” of competitors and their low notoriety, analyses political scientist Mohamed Hennad.

But Abdelmadjid Tebboune is keen “on a significant turnout. He wants to be a normal president, not a badly elected president,” Hasni Abidi of the Cermam study centre in Geneva told AFP.

“Point of no return”

Of the 865,490 voters living abroad who have been voting since Monday, turnout was 18.31% at 6:00 p.m., according to Anie. More than 24 million voters out of 45 million inhabitants are summoned. Public buses, the metro and the tramway are free to facilitate travel.

After his vote, Abdelaali Hassani called on Algerians to go to the polls because “a high turnout gives greater credibility to these elections.” Youcef Aouchiche also urged “Algerians to participate in force” to emerge “definitively from the boycott and despair,” after an electoral campaign that generated little enthusiasm.

Without mentioning the turnout, Abdelmadjid Tebboune hoped that “the winner of the presidential election would continue (his) project, which is decisive for Algeria in order to reach a point of no return in economic development and the construction of a democracy.”

“Severe repression”

At the end of the campaign on Tuesday, the man whom Internet users affectionately nickname “aammi Tebboune” (Uncle Tebboune) pledged to give young people – more than half of the population and a third of the voters – “the place that suits them”.

Abdelmadjid Tebboune claims that his first five-year term was hampered by Covid-19 and the corruption of his predecessor, of whom he was nevertheless a minister. His rivals promise more freedoms. The FFS candidate pledges to “free prisoners of conscience through an amnesty and to review unjust laws” on terrorism or the media. The MSP candidate advocates “respect for freedoms reduced to nothing.”

According to expert Abidi, five years after the Hirak protest movement, stifled by Covid-related bans on gatherings and the arrest of its leading figures, Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s record suffers from “a deficit of democracy” which could constitute a handicap during a new mandate.

The NGO Amnesty International accused the government this week of continuing to “stifle civic space by maintaining a severe repression of human rights”, with “new arbitrary arrests” and “a zero tolerance approach to dissenting opinions”.

AFP

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