On August 31, the conference room in the library of the town of Boumerdès, 45 kilometres east of Algiers, with a capacity of 250 people, is almost full. A feat for a summer Saturday, when the humidity turns the 29° on the thermometer into 37° in this coastal town lined with long beaches. Everyone came to hear Youcef Aouchiche, candidate of the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS), present his programme for the presidential elections of September 7, in which he is running against the outgoing President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Once their cameras are fixed on the stage, half a dozen cameramen slump into their seats, noses glued to their phones. Mr. Aouchiche arrives discreetly, without immediate applause. In front of a dozen microphones from the national media, he energetically sets out his economic and social programme. Classical Arabic is not his language and he sometimes stops in the middle of a sentence to glance at his text, preferring Darija, the Algerian dialect, or slipping in a few words in Kabyle and French.
Competing against the Islamists of the Movement for Society for Peace (MSP) and the socialists of the FFS, two parties with a strong national base, Abdelmadjid Tebboune faces, on paper, greater adversity than in 2019, when he was elected against Abdelkader Bengrina (17.3%), the president of the Islamist party El Binaa, who has since joined the outgoing president. Among observers of the Algerian political scene, many are wondering why the FFS, which has always refused to commit itself in elections, “played in advance”He agreed to participate – and thus give a kind of guarantee – in the presidential elections promised to the head of state.
Resisting the “resignation” of voters
According to Youcef Aouchiche, questioned on the subject after his party’s announcement of its participation on May 25, this decision is less linked to an improvement in democracy than to the risk that a boycott would pose for Algeria. “Today the Algerian renounced political action, he explained. We have gone from distrust to resignation, which is a danger. Despite the questionable conditions in which the upcoming elections will take place, […] It offers an opportunity for the reconquest of democratic political spaces. » In your opinion, the FFS is capable of doing “emerge a powerful patriotic, progressive and democratic political pole”capable of “rehabilitate freedom of expression and opinion.” Although the campaign was relatively consensual, Mr. Aouchiche periodically called for the release of prisoners of conscience, who according to President Tebboune do not exist.
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