Algeria's Abdelmadjid Tebboune Secures Second Presidential Term, but Fails to Raise Voter Participation

Tebboune had directed his campaigning efforts towards boosting voter participation after a record-low abstention rate of over 60 percent in 2019, followed by wide boycotts of a 2020 referendum and 2021 parliamentary elections. He did not succeed in bringing voters to the booth.

Teacher and leading figure from Algeria’s pro-democracy movement Nassira Amourtold KRON4, “The vast majority of the Algerian people have just given le pouvoir a lesson in democracy,” registering the low voter turnout as a victory for the Hirak movement that swept the country in 2019 and, unintentionally, helped Tebboune into power.

Amour is echoed by former Hirak leader Hakim Addad who told France24, “Algerians don’t give a damn about this bogus election. The political crisis will persist as long as the regime remains in place. The Hirak has spoken.”

Algerian politics student Mohamed Boumadi disagrees. “Policies and real matters in the country do not change by which president is in office and Algerians are aware of that,” he tells OkayAfrica. “People didn’t really boycott or organize themselves, but rather accepted the fact that Tebboune was going to be president for a second term. Participation in the elections was just ‘unnecessary’ for the majority of the population.”

Whether the lack of participation was symbolic or merely a result of disillusionment, it looks bad for the military’s civilian facade which is contemporarily represented by Tebboune. After polling stations closed on Saturday, ANIE announced an "average rate" of 48 percent but called it "provisional."

This number was widely reported across international news outlets, but soon turned out to be an exaggeration, which prompted the three candidates to issue a joint statement, criticizing "irregularities" in ANIE's results, claiming they wanted to make the public aware of "vagueness and contradictions in the participation figures."

This unexpected controversy is unlikely to affect Tebboune’s status as president and his co-signing of the statement can be understood as a false concern for democracy. “He just didn’t want blowback because the participation rate that was announced was clearly higher than what it actually was,” says Boumadi.

During his first term, Tebboune eroded human rights such as freedom of expression and independent media reporting. However, Russia’s war on Ukraine and Israel’s war on Gaza elevated Algeria to become a key supplier of oil and gas, resulting in increased revenue that Tebboune invested in some social benefits, including unemployment insurance as well as public wages and pensions. He has also pledged to create 450,000 jobs if re-elected.

While human rights activists have continued to strongly criticize his government, Algeria’s relatively stable economy seems to have lowered the mainstream public’s discontent.

“Algeria’s economic condition is not awful, which means people are more or less unbothered with the status quo,” says Boumadi. “The only thing Algerians don’t want a repetition of is a lifetime president like [Abdelaziz] Bouteflika.”

Online, people widely ridiculed the election result, calling it the “joke of the century” and comparing Tebboune’s unrealistically high percentage of 94.7 to other dictators winning sham elections.

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Over the course of 2024, 20 African countries will be holding elections. For more election coverage, check out our Election Tracker.