In Algeria, against all expectations, the re-elected president and his two opponents denounce “major inconsistencies” in the announced results

A dramatic turn of events after a dismal campaign. On Sunday, September 8, before midnight, the campaign directors of the three candidates for the Algerian presidential election, including that of the winner, denounced in a joint statement “major inconsistencies” in the provisional results of the September 7 presidential election delivered by the National Independent Authority for Elections (ANIE). According to these figures, Abdelmadjid Tebboune obtained 5,329,253 votes, or 94.65% of the votes cast. Abdelaali Hassani Cherif of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), an Islamist party, was credited with 178,797 votes (3.17%) and Mohamed Aouchiche, of the Front of Socialist Forces, with 122,146 votes (2.16%).

But the historically lowest level of participation led Mohamed Charfi, the president of ANIE, to take some liberties with transparency. He refused to announce the participation rate, which was easy to guess, by reporting the number of votes cast, 5,630,196, to the 24,351,551 voters making up the electoral body. Many Internet users supplemented him with their calculators to obtain, at best, a participation rate that fluctuates between 23 and 25%.

On September 7, Mohamed Charfi had given a misleading figure on a “average participation rate” of 48.03%, consisting of taking the participation rates in the wilayas (communities) and dividing them by 58 (their number). A calculation method quickly mocked. In a Facebook post, since removed, the former leader of the MSP, Abderrazak Makri, criticized a “unprecedented inflation of the participation rate in the entire history of Algerian elections.” “The president did not even need to manipulate this rate, he had already wonhe added. This falsification of the turnout removes all credibility from the vote.”

Then on the evening of September 8, against all expectations, the campaign directors of the three candidates denounced, in a joint press release “irregularities and contradictions in the announced results”, signaling that they hear “informing the public of the vagueness and contradictions in the participation figures”The press release also highlights the existence of a “error in the announcement of the percentages for each candidate” and some “data contradictory with the vote counting reports” submitted to the electoral authority by local electoral commissions.

A cold shower for the re-elected president

If the inconsistencies of the ANIE are very real, its president Mohamed Charfi serves here as a scapegoat for the three candidates, whose names are now associated with the presidential election that will have historically mobilized the least voters. The re-elected outgoing president Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the FFS candidate Youcef Aouchiche and the MSP candidate, Abdelaali Hassani Cherif, failed to overcome the abstention of Algerians whose political demands formulated during the popular protest movement of Hirak are very far from the offer proposed by the regime. However, it was the first issue of the vote.

With a certain delay, Mohamed Charfi said however “satisfied with the strong participation of citizens at this deadline” and assured that the “The Algerian people, all components combined, have demonstrated a high degree of electoral maturity”. In reality, this election has the effect of a cold shower for President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. The turnout is, by all appearances, much lower than that recorded in 2019. It was 39.88%.

Nouri Driss, professor of political sociology, notes on his Facebook page: “Power no longer has the tools and institutions that allow it to understand society. It is disconnected from society and society is disconnected from it. The mechanisms on which power relies do not provide it with reality…” Lyas Hallas, director of the electronic newspaper Take, noted for his part that with such a low turnout, President Tebboune was poorly re-elected: “There is no point in disguising the figures. His project (assuming he has a project) does not generate support. He can neither initiate reforms nor mobilize initiatives. We can imagine what his second term will be like. He will look for slides not yet completed from the Bouteflika era to inaugurate but, above all, increase the repression of criticism at the risk of provoking a social implosion and bringing the country into a zone of turbulence…”

As a former journalist underlines under the cover of anonymity, the Algerians, whose expression has been stifled by constant repression since the end of the Hirak due to the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, confirm, by this record level of abstention, that they have other demands than the fictitious political life offered by the regime: “The FFS and the MSP are the big losers in this election, but President Tebboune has lost more. His room for maneuver with regard to the army is more limited than ever. He will not be able to be a Bouteflika.”