Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The three candidates in Algeria’s presidential election including Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the incumbent who was declared the winner in a landslide victory, have complained of irregularities in the ballot and cast doubts on the figures declared in the official result.
The joint complaint is unusual in a country where polls are carefully managed by the military-backed authorities to ensure a facade of democratic legitimacy.
In a joint statement late on Sunday, managers of the three election campaigns decried what they described as “vague and contradictory” numbers announced by the National Independent Election Authority (ANIE). They said the results did not conform with counts declared at the local level by election officials.
The results gave Tebboune a landslide win with 94.7 per cent of the vote. Abdelali Hassani Cherif, of the Islamist Movement of Society for Peace, came a distant second with 3 per cent, while Youcef Aouchiche, leader of the Socialist Forces Front, was third with 2.1 per cent.
ANIE said only 5.6mn out of Algeria’s 24mn registered voters cast ballots. But it did not explain the reason for the much lower number after having announced on Saturday once voting had closed that the turnout rate was 48 per cent.
The implied turnout of 24 per cent is a blow to the president, who had promised to raise salaries and pensions in a bid to encourage voting after an unprecedentedly low participation rate of 40 per cent in the 2019 election. Analysts said he had been campaigning for a strong popular mandate to enhance his legitimacy and shore up his position within the military-backed regime.
The joint complaint is seen as a possible sign of discord between Tebboune and the military chiefs who control politics in the north African state — a member of the Opec oil exporters group and a key gas supplier to Europe.
“It could be that a faction in the army has an interest in Tebboune remaining a weak president, dependent on their support,” Riccardo Fabiani, north Africa director of the International Crisis Group, said on Monday.
Tebboune was first elected president in 2019 in a widely boycotted poll that followed 10 months of protests known as the Hirak (Movement) in which hundreds of thousands of people marched every week to demand an end to the military-backed regime.
The military responded by ousting Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the ageing president who was the initial focus of the protesters’ anger, but rejected the democratic overhaul of the political system demanded by the leaderless Hirak.
Instead, they organised elections, won by Tebboune, a regime insider who was presented as the fulfilment of protesters’ demands. But he proceeded to crack down on freedoms, arresting hundreds of activists and curtailing press freedoms.
“A potentially interesting conclusion is that even after five years in power and all the arrests, Tebboune is unable to fully control the state and all of its institutions, or otherwise he would have been able to manipulate the numbers,” said Fabiani.
Rachid Chaibi, a spokesperson for Aouchiche’s campaign who claimed his candidate won more votes than those announced by the electoral authority, said the campaign would contest the results at the country’s constitutional court.
