3 months ago
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Incumbent President
Abdelmadjid Tebboune
secured a second term with 84.3 percent of the vote in the recently concluded Algerian presidential election, according to the final results announced by the
Constitutional Court
on Saturday. This figure is lower than the initial count, which had given Tebboune nearly 95 percent support, leading to challenges from rival candidates.
The court's president, Omar Belhadj, officially declared Tebboune's victory, saying, "We announce that Abdelmadjid Tebboune is elected for a second term, and will assume his responsibilities when he swears in." The election saw a turnout of 46.1 percent among the more than 24 million registered voters.
Tebboune's challengers, Abdelaali Hassani of the moderate Islamist party the
Movement of Society for Peace
and Youcef Aouchiche of the centre-left Socialist Forces Front, submitted their challenges to the vote count, alleging irregularities and fraud. In an unprecedented move, all three campaigns, including Tebboune's, issued a joint statement expressing concerns about the "vagueness and contradictions in the participation figures" provided by the electoral authority ANIE.
The final results showed Hassani receiving 9.56 percent of the votes and Aouchiche securing 6.14 percent, in contrast to the preliminary results announced by ANIE, which had given them 3.17 percent and 2.16 percent, respectively.
Tebboune's first term began after widely boycotted elections and mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, which subsided under his tenure as policing increased and hundreds of protesters were imprisoned. During his first term, he highlighted economic successes, such as increased employment and higher wages in
Algeria
, Africa's largest exporter of natural gas. However, the country's economy remains heavily reliant on oil and gas revenues to fund its social programmes, despite an annual growth rate of about four percent over the past two years.
