Algeria’s Tebboune re-elected president for second term

Algiers, Algeria – AFP

Algeria’s Abdelmadjid Tebboune has been re-elected as president, the country’s electoral authority ANIE said Sunday.

More than 5.3 million people voted for Tebboune, accounting for “94.65 percent of the vote,” ANIE head Mohamed Charfi told reporters.

Tebboune, 78, had been heavily favoured to secure a five-year second term, in the race against moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani, 57, who won 3.17 percent of the vote and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche, 41, who won 2.16 percent.

While Tebboune’s re-election was certain, his main focus was to boost voter participation in Saturday’s poll after a record-low abstention rate of over 60 percent in 2019.

That year, Tebboune became president amid widely boycotted elections and mass pro-democracy Hirak protests that later died out under his tenure with ramped-up policing and hundreds put in jail.

More than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote. But ANIE didn’t say how many people in total had turned out to cast their ballot on Saturday.

-‘Masquerade’-

After polling stations closed on Saturday, ANIE had announced an “average rate” of 48 percent but called it “provisional”.

Hassani’s campaign later said the figure was “strange” and denounced attempts to “inflate the results”.

It also said it had recorded “instances of proxy group voting”.

In a video posted on Facebook, the campaign’s head, Ahmed Sadouk, said the election results were a “masquerade” and disputed the turnout announced by ANIE.

He said “the results undermine the elections and tarnish the image of the country”.

“The president has been keen to have a significant turnout,” Hasni Abidi, an Algeria analyst at the Geneva-based CERMAM Study Center, told AFP. “It’s his main issue.”