Polling stations opened in the wake of Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s expected victory.

This is an election without any real surprises: more than 24 million Algerians are called to the polls on Saturday 7 September for the presidential elections, in which President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is expected to be re-elected for a second term. Polling stations opened at 9:00 a.m. and will close at 8:00 p.m. The results could be published on Saturday evening and an official announcement is expected by Sunday at the latest.

The re-election of Tebboune, 78, is all the more certain since four major parties are supporting his candidacy, in particular the National Liberation Front (FLN, the former sole party) and the Islamist movement El Bina. “The winner is known in advance”taking into account “quality”of “unusually small number” competitors, and “Conditions in which the election campaign was conducted are nothing but a comedy”says Mohamed Hennad, a political scientist, on Facebook.

Facing the outgoing president are two little-known candidates: Abdelaali Hassani, a 57-year-old civil engineering engineer and head of the Movement for Society for Peace (MSP), the main Islamist party, and Youcef Aouchiche, 41, a former journalist and senator, at the head of the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS), the oldest opposition party, anchored in Kabylia.

The question of participation.

“The president wants a significant turnout. This is the first question. He has not forgotten that he was elected in 2019 with a low turnout. He wants to be a normal president, not a poorly elected president.”Hasni Abidi of the Cermam research centre in Geneva told Agence France Presse.

Abstention levels reached a record high (60%) during the elections won by Tebboune in December 2019 with 58% of the vote, while mass demonstrations for a change in the system in force since independence (1962) were gaining momentum.

This protest movement, Hirak, had just ousted Tebboune’s predecessor, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, from power with the powerful army in April after 20 years of reign.

Faced with the spectre of low turnout, Tebboune, like his opponents, toured the country, but the election campaign aroused little enthusiasm. Algerians living abroad, 865,490 voters according to the Electoral Authority of the ANIE, have been voting since Monday.

In foreign policy, there is a consensus on the Palestinian and Sahrawi causes, defended by all the contenders. The three candidates focused their speeches on socio-economic issues, promising to improve purchasing power and restore the economy, so that it is less dependent on hydrocarbons (95% of foreign exchange earnings).

Helped by a windfall from natural gas, Tebboune promised new wage and pension increases, investments, two million new homes and 450,000 new jobs, to make Algeria, “Africa’s second largest economy”behind South Africa. At the end of Tuesday’s campaign, which social media affectionately dubs “Aammi Tebboune” (Tonton Tebboune) is committed to returning to young people – more than half of the 45 million inhabitants and a third of voters – the “a place that suits them”Tebboune says his first five-year term was hampered by Covid-19 and corruption under his predecessor, under whom he served several times as minister.

His rivals promise more freedoms. The NGO Amnesty International accused the government this week of continuing“stifling civic space by maintaining severe repression of human rights”with “new arbitrary arrests” AND “a zero tolerance approach to dissenting opinions”According to the National Committee for the Liberation of Prisoners (CNLD), dozens of people linked to the Hirak or to the defense of freedoms remain imprisoned or persecuted.