Algeria President to Run Again With Turnout Likely to Suffer

(Bloomberg) -- Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said he’ll seek a second term in elections he’s highly likely to win, taking advantage of an early poll that could hurt turnout and expose political fault lines in the North African OPEC member.

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“The state’s revenues have strengthened, the bleeding of the public treasury has ended and Algeria has recovered what could have been recovered from looted funds estimated at billions of dollars,” Tebboune, 78, was quoted as saying on state TV on Thursday, referring to his first term that began in late 2019.

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“I announce my intention to run for a second term, as allowed by the constitution, and the Algerian people will have the final say in this matter,” he said.

The long-anticipated step marks a new phase in preparations for a vote that was initially scheduled in December but is now being held on Sept. 7, due to what the incumbent has called “purely technical” reasons. An early poll may make it harder for challengers to organize, dampening voter participation in the country that’s a key supplier of energy to Europe.

The change “was probably a way to forestall any possible attempts by opposition candidates to mount a serious challenge to Tebboune and also to block any possible maneuver by army factions,” said Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa project director at the International Crisis Group.

Tebboune was first elected in 2019 in a ballot marred by widespread apathy after Algeria’s powerful military ousted Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who’d held power for two decades. The country was then mired in political upheaval as the pro-democracy Hirak protest movement demanded alternatives to the elite who’ve governed since independence from France in 1962.

This year’s earlier ballot “is forcing everyone to hold an electoral campaign over the summer, when it will be much more challenging,” Fabiani said.

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Several political parties have announced they’ll field candidates, including the FFS, the country’s oldest opposition group, as well as the Workers’ Party and the Movement for Society and Peace, a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Domestic Dynamics

“There are only two variables that matter regarding the next elections in Algeria: the turnout rate and Tebboune’s score,” according to Fabiani.

Participation in 2019’s vote was less than 40%, while a constitutional referendum the following year drew under 24%.

Although Tebboune’s victory is assured, “how he does it matters a lot for domestic dynamics, his power relative to other factions and groups within Algeria, such as the business class, the trade unions, the political parties,” Fabiani said.

On taking power, Tebboune — a long-time government insider who was briefly prime minister — vowed to answer protesters’ reform demands, but soon found himself confronting economic troubles including depleted foreign-currency reserves and the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. State spending and imports were curbed.

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Tebboune himself was stricken by the coronavirus, spending about two months in Germany for treatment in 2020.

A boost for Algeria came from rising oil and gas prices following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, enabling authorities to offer wage and pension hikes and cash handouts for the unemployed. Political tensions haven’t been resolved, while diplomatic tussles continue with neighbor Morocco over the disputed territory of Western Sahara as well as former colonial ruler France.

(Updates with Tebboune comment in third paragraph.)

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