On July 11, as part of his usual weekly meeting with the Algerian press, President Abdelmajid Tebboune confirmed his intention to run in the upcoming presidential elections, set for September 7.
The president thus lifted his reservations about his intentions, one week before the deadline for nominations, claiming that he made the decision to stand as a candidate in the elections as a result of pressing demands from a number of political parties and civil society organizations.
In making the announcement, Tebboune recalled his government’s achievements especially in terms of economic policy, claiming that it had stopped the hemorrhaging of public money that had characterized previous terms, fostered sustained growth in state revenues, and thus set the stage for a revival of the national economy.
Thus, to date, four candidates have been admitted to the presidential elections next September 7. In addition to Tebboune, Youcef Aouchice (Socialist Forces Front), Abdellah Hassan Cherif (Islamist-leaning Movement for Society and Peace party), and Saida Neghza, the only woman among the candidates (General Confederation of Algerian Enterprises), have also collected the necessary number of signatures.
Some thirty-five politicians have indicated their intention to run, but without reaching the necessary number of signatures to get their participation approved, while Louisa Hanoune, of the Algerian Workers’ Party, announced on July 15 that she was dropping out of the race for the elections as a result of what she described as unfair conditions dictated by a distorted legal framework, which effectively prevents candidates from outside the power apparatus from competing equally.
Indeed, the decision by the government to advance the date of the elections by about three months further limited the capacity of candidates not only in the procedures for collecting signatures, but also in organizing the campaign, being strongly criticized and considered part of a strategy to ensure Abdlemajid Tebboune’s victory.
The reelection of the incumbent president is seen by observers as highly likely, not least in view of the support given to Tebboune by some of the country’s major political parties, such as the National Liberation Front, the National Democratic Grouping, the Future Movement and the National Construction Movement, which through their support should be able to ensure the president’s ability to achieve a new victory by ensuring the continuity of rule of Algeria’s historic power apparatuses.
The announcement of the officialization of Tebboune’s candidacy came twenty-four hours after a significant visit to the Berber region of Kabylia, which is notoriously characterized by the presence of anti-government forces, where the president inaugurated the opening of a sports facility in Tizi Ouzou during an institutional activity that many have deemed as functional in furthering the announcement. The sports facility, described by the press as one of the most modern on the entire African continent, is symbolically named after one of the most important leaders of the war of independence, Hicne Ait-Ahmed, who later led an armed Berber insurrection against the government of Ahmed Ben Bella in 1963, being arrested and then managing to flee abroad, where he died in 2015. This is an important recognition, through which the government intends to send a conciliatory signal to the Berber components of the Algerian population, which have always been committed to the recognition of their language and traditions, and which Tebboune intends to court ahead of the elections next September 7.
Although Tebboune’s reappointment seems almost certain, the upcoming elections do not look easy for the governing establishment, which now has to contend with an increasingly modest voter turnout, the result of a public disaffection from politics that tends to increasingly delegitimize an apparatus of power only ostensibly governed by political power, and where on the contrary the armed forces continue to play a prominent role in controlling and directing the country’s political and economic strategies.
Even the enthusiasm expressed by Tebboune regarding his government’s successes in the economic sector does not find unequivocal support in Algerian society, where, on the contrary, the perception of a constantly evolving crisis persists, accompanied by the absence of real strategies to implement the oft-announced measures of diversification from the hydrocarbon sector and investment in the development of new industrial chains. No less critical, finally, are the issues of freedom of expression and political pluralism, which had already emerged in the Hirak protests and then subsided with the pandemic, but certainly not vanished.
