 "Presidential candidate of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), Abdelali Hassani Cherif, prepares to cast his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria.- AP")
Algeria’s electoral authority is set to announce later Sunday presidential poll results which incumbent Abdelmadjid Tebboune is expected to breeze through, amid accusations of efforts to “inflate results”.
Tebboune, 78, is heavily favoured to secure a second term, in the race against moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani, 57, and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche, 41.
His main challenge was to boost voter participation in Saturday’s vote after a historic abstention rate of over 60 percent in 2019.
That year, Tebboune became president amid widely boycotted elections and mass pro-democracy Hirak protests that later died out under his tenure with ramped-up policing and hundreds put in jail.
Both of Tebboune’s challengers had called for a large turnout Saturday morning, hoping to end “the boycott” and make the elections “credible” as more than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote.
But it remained unclear by Sunday afternoon how many people in total had turned out to cast their ballot.
More than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote this year, but electoral authority ANIE on Sunday did not give an official turnout rate.
Instead, it announced a “provisional average turnout” rate of 48 percent, without giving the total number of voters.
Hassani’s campaign on Sunday said the move was “strange” and denounced “pressure on some polling station officials to inflate the results”, without giving further details.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsANIE is set to announce the official turnout rate later on Sunday, along with the election’s results.
Polls closed late Saturday and vote counting was underway as Algerians awaited an announcement of the results. The country’s election authority at 12:10 a.m. said that vote counting to so far suggested voter turnout was 48% in Algeria and 19.6% for precincts abroad — outpacing the country’s 2019 presidential election, where 39.9% of voters turned out to vote.
Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area and, with almost 45 million people, it’s the continent’s second most populous after South Africa to hold presidential elections in 2024 — a year in which more than 50 elections are being held worldwide, encompassing more than half the world’s population.
With inputs from agencies.