News Mania Desk/ Piyal Chatterjee/ 9th September 2024
The electoral administration of Algeria reports that Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the 78-year-old president, has been re-elected with a resounding vote.
The chairman of the National Independent Authority for Elections (ANIE), Mohamed Charfi, informed reporters in the capital Algiers on Sunday that 5,320,000 of the 5,630,000 voters who were registered cast ballots for the independent candidate Abdelmadjid Tebboune, accounting for 94.65 percent of the vote on Saturday.
The candidates challenging Tebboune, backed by the Army, were socialist Youcef Aouchiche with 2.1 percent of the vote and conservative Abdelaali Hassani Cherif with 3 percent.
The campaign of Hassani Cherif claimed that poll workers had been coerced into inflating results, that vote-sorting records had not been delivered to the candidates’ representatives, and that proxy group voting had occurred. It remained silent on whether it thought the infractions had an impact on the outcome.
But in announcing the results, head of the electoral commission Charfi stated that the body has made efforts to guarantee openness and equitable competition for all candidates.
Early in the morning, ANIE declared a “provisional” “average turnout” percentage of 48%, but it did not provide a breakdown of the actual number of voters compared to those who had first registered.
Following a period of reduced oil prices, Tebboune came to government in 2019 and restarted lavish social expenditure based on rising energy income. With his reelection, Algeria is expected to stick with this governance platform.As he did during his first tenure as president, he has pledged to boost public housing programs, pensions, and unemployment benefits.
With a population of about 45 million, Algeria is the second most populous country on the continent after South Africa. It will host presidential elections in 2024 and is the largest country in terms of area.
Activists and foreign organizations, like as Amnesty International, denounced the oppressive environment of the campaign season, as well as the harassment and prosecution of opposition party members, media outlets, and civil society organizations. This election has drawn criticism for being a rubber stamp process that will only serve to maintain the status quo.
However, Tebboune and his two opponents all called for political engagement and made particular appeals to Algeria’s youth, who comprise the majority of the country and are disproportionately affected by unemployment and poverty.
