At the football match between Algeria and Equatorial Guinea, Algerian fans are the symbol of political boredom. “We are not going to vote,” a group of young people exclaim amid cheers and goal celebrations. When current President Abdelmadjid Tebboune came to power in 2019, 60% of the population decided not to go to the polls. Five years later, on Saturday 7, abstention has reportedly been reduced, according to questionable data from the National Independent Authority for Elections (ANIE).
ANIE announced the provisional results of the presidential election on Sunday, according to which Tebboune was re-elected with 94.65% of the vote. Facing the current president and independent candidate, a divided and oppressed opposition was represented by two candidates: Youcef Aouchiche, first secretary of the historic left-wing party Front of Socialist Forces (FFS), and Abdelaali Hassani, president of the Society for the Movement for Peace (MPS), the largest Islamist political movement in Algeria.
Hassani, a 57-year-old engineer, came second with 3.17% of the vote, while Aouchiche, a former journalist and leader of the country’s oldest opposition party, came third with 2.16% of the vote.
However, the three candidates denounced this Monday in a joint statement “the ambiguity and contradiction of the announced figures of the participation rates”, as well as the provisional results proposed by the ANIE, in which “most of the data are missing”. The ANIE spoke of a confusing “average participation rate” of 48% – which according to analysts is the average of the rates of the 58 Algerian provinces – and stressed that 5,329,253 Algerians voted for Tebboune, out of a total of 5,630,196 who exercised the right to vote. Both the MPS and the FFS proposed data on their candidates different from those of the electoral authority.
Lack of legitimacy
In March 2024, the presidential elections, scheduled for December of this year, were brought forward by Tebboune himself to September. A decision that adds to the authoritarian turns of the president throughout his mandate, camouflaged behind the attempt to build “a new Algeria”.
Laurence Thieux, professor at the Department of International Relations and Global History at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), explains to elDiario.es that, despite the fact that Tebboune has tried to strengthen his legitimacy in recent years, “the way of managing the Algerian state is the same. According to the academic, the social contract is based on the redistribution of hydrocarbon revenues, but this redistribution of wealth is “a redistribution that allows social peace to be bought imperfectly. “That does not satisfy at all.”
For his part, Rouf Farrah, Algerian researcher specializing in geopolitics and coordinator of the collective book Algeria: The Future at Stake, Essay on the Prospects of a Country in Suspended He claims in a conversation with elDiario.es that Tebboune “has the lowest legitimacy since the country’s independence.” Farrah, who was arrested in 2023 and imprisoned for nine months, now resides in Tunisia, from where he explains that the regime has implemented new laws and changes that, in practice, “give more power to the army and the government to control and repress society.”
Following the reform of the Constitution in 2020 and a recent presidential decree of July 2024, the regime allows senior army officers to hold positions of responsibility in the administration and management of infrastructures considered strategic, such as airports. On the other hand, even if anti-corruption measures have been announced to improve transparency in the political and economic management of the country, Algeria ranks 104th out of 180 countries included in the Corruption Perceptions Index of the organization Transparency International in 2023.
“It’s not the same country as the Hirak”
The Hirak, the social movement that brought down the previous Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika (1999-2019), lost the power to gather and the space to protest with Tebboune’s rise to the presidency, with the fundamental support of the army and the police. “Civil society is almost non-existent. This is not the same country as the Hirak. The pre-Hirak regime played a role in manipulating the social climate and the political clientele. Now that is being replaced by repression,” Farrah explains.
Authorities have intensified their crackdown on Hirak activists since the COVID-19 pandemic forced a halt to street protests. As Professor Thieux explains, “this is a crackdown that relies on the arbitrary application of legal measures that repress freedoms of expression.”
Currently there are about 250 political prisoners, there has been a total closure of the media space with the disappearance of newspapers like I released and imprisoned journalists such as Ihsane El Kadi, as well as the persistent judicial harassment against Karim Tabbou, representative of the Hirak and leader of the Democratic and Social Union, an opposition party not approved by the authorities.
Farrah, for his part, highlights the legislative changes to an article of the Algerian Constitution, in which “they broadened the accusation of terrorism in a vague way.” Compared to neighboring countries Tunisia and Morocco, Farrah says the setback in the field of human rights is more serious, but the socio-economic situation is better.
“This was precisely the discourse of the Bouteflika regime. It is social and economic blackmail of human rights,” he emphasizes.
Algeria, European ally for gas
In general, Algeria has gradually lost its diplomatic influence. “The immobility of domestic politics and the climate of repression also have an impact on their capacity for external action,” explains Thieux. The UCM professor emphasizes that the recourse to nationalism and the idea that the nation is threatened by plots and external actors fuel periodic crises with its traditional enemies, notably with Morocco and France.
In the Sahel, Algiers has broken off diplomatic relations with Mali and Niger. With the former, after the military operations that the Malian army, supported by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, carried out on the border with Algeria. Regarding Morocco, relations remain minimal, as does external support regarding the conflict in Western Sahara. Spain and France have aligned themselves with the Moroccan thesis of autonomy over the Sahara, while Algeria defends the self-determination process claimed by its ally, the Polisario Front.
Long before Tebboune became president, “France, Spain or Italy have always left the issue of human rights in the background or as mere declarations without political consequences. Of course, interests such as gas or security cooperation are a major priority,” says Theiux.
Algeria is the world’s eighth largest gas producer with 3% of the world’s proven reserves. After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe targeted Algeria as a supplier of natural gas, of which Russia was the largest European supplier before the war.
Currently, around 8% of the gas consumed in Europe comes from Algeria. The figure increases in the case of Spain, which, of all the gas imported during the month of June 2024, came more than 45% from this North African country.
