Algeria’s incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 78, has been re-elected to the position with an emphatic vote, says the country’s electoral authority.
“Of 5,630,000 voters recorded, 5,320,000 voted for the independent candidate Abdelmadjid Tebboune, accounting for 94.65 percent” of Saturday’s vote, National Independent Authority for Elections (ANIE) head Mohamed Charfi told reporters in the capital Algiers on Sunday.
Army-backed Tebboune’s challengers included conservative Abdelaali Hassani Cherif, who won 3 percent of the ballots, and socialist Youcef Aouchiche, who won 2.1 percent.
Hassani Cherif’s campaign said polling station officials had been pressured to inflate results and alleged failures to deliver vote-sorting records to candidates’ representatives, as well as instances of proxy group voting. It did not say whether it believed the violations had affected the result.
However, electoral commission head Charfi said when announcing the results that the body had worked to ensure transparency and fair competition among all candidates.
In the early hours of the day, ANIE had announced an “average turnout” rate of 48 percent, calling it “provisional”, but it did not give a breakdown of the number of voters against those initially registered.
‘Young people uninterested in vote’
Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Algiers, said there has been a shadow over Algerian politics for decades because of the military’s involvement in it.
“Algeria has been moving towards democracy… always under the leader favoured or backed by the military establishment here,” he said.
Javaid stressed that young people in Algeria had been especially uninterested in the election.
“Younger Algerians who talked to us feel that the country should do a lot more for them to be part of the electoral process and have faith that their vote actually matters,” he said.
Tebboune’s re-election means Algeria will likely continue with a governing programme that has resumed lavish social spending based on increased energy revenues after he came into office in 2019 following a period of lower oil prices.
He has promised to raise unemployment benefits, pensions and public housing programmes, all of which he increased during his first term as president.
Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area and, with almost 45 million people, it is the continent’s second most populous after South Africa to hold presidential elections in 2024.
Throughout the campaign, activists and international organisations, including Amnesty International, railed against the campaign season’s repressive atmosphere and the harassment and prosecutions of those involved in opposition parties, media organisations and civil society groups. Some denounced this election as a rubber stamp exercise that can only entrench the status quo.
But Tebboune and his two challengers each urged political participation and specifically made overtures to the Algerian youth, who make up a majority of the population and disproportionately suffer from poverty and unemployment.
