ALGIERS, Algeria
Algerian authorities declared President Abdulmadjid Tebboune the overwhelming winner of Saturday's election on Sunday, but a rival candidate alleged irregularities in the count and fewer than half of registered voters cast ballots.
Official preliminary results
gave Tebboune 95 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a second-round
run-off, with Abdelaali Hassani Cherif getting 3 percent and Youcef
Aouchiche 2 percent. Turnout was 48 percent.
Tebboune, backed by the
military, was facing only nominal opposition from Hassani Cherif, a moderate
Islamist, and Aouchiche, a moderate secularist, both running with the blessing
of Algeria's powerful establishment.
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.
"This is a farce,"
said Hassani Cherif's spokesperson Ahmed Sadok, adding that the candidate had
won far more votes than had been announced, citing the campaign's own tallies
from regions.
Our reporter could not
immediately verify those tallies or reach Tebboune's or Aouchiche's campaign
for comment.
However, electoral commission
head Mohammed Charfi said when announcing the results that the body had worked
to ensure transparency and fair competition among all candidates.
Tebboune's re-election means
Algeria will likely keep on 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.
"As long as Tebboune
continues to raise wages and pensions and maintain subsidies he will be the
best in my eyes," said Ali, a cafe customer in the Ouled Fayet district of
Algiers, asking not to write his family name.
First elected during the mass
"hirak" (movement) protests that forced his veteran predecessor
Abdulaziz Bouteflika from power after 20 years, Tebboune has backed a tough
approach from the security forces, which have jailed prominent dissidents.
His election in 2019 reflected
the anti-establishment mood in Algeria that year, with turnout of 40 percent,
far below previous votes.
The protests, which brought
hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets every week for more than a
year demanding an end to corruption and the ousting of the ruling elite, were
finally curtailed by the Covid pandemic.
"Turnout is very low. It
shows that the vast majority is like me," said another Ouled Fayet
resident, Slimane, 24, who also asked not to give his family name. He did not
vote because he does not trust politicians, he said.
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