Algeria court certifies President Tebboune’s landslide re-election win

Constitutional Court says the incumbent held his seat by securing 84.3 percent of the votes in September 7 polls.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has won a second term with a landslide 84.3 percent of the vote in last week’s election, according to the Constitutional Court.

The court on Saturday said it had local voting data to settle questions about irregularities that Tebboune’s opponents had alleged in two appeals this week.

The preliminary results issued by the National Independent Authority for Elections (ANIE) on Sunday gave Tebboune nearly 95 percent support, prompting other candidates to challenge the results in court.

“After verification of the minutes of the regions and correction of the errors noted in the counting of the votes,” it lowered Tebboune’s vote share and determined that his two opponents had won hundreds of thousands more votes than previously reported, Constitutional Court President Omar Belhadj said in remarks broadcast live on national TV and radio stations.

“We announce that Mr Abdelmadjid Tebboune is elected for a second term and will assume his responsibilities when he swears in,” Belhadj said.

Tebboune, 78, had been widely expected to breeze through the election and was focused instead on securing a high turnout, which according to Belhadj stood at 46.1 percent in the September 7 ballot, in which more than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote.

Tebboune was first elected in December 2019 with 58 percent of the vote despite a record abstention rate above 60 percent during the mass Hirak pro-democracy protests. He has since drawn criticism over his human rights record.

According to Amnesty International, Algerian authorities under Tebboune “have maintained their repression of civic space” and “a zero-tolerance approach to dissenting opinions”.

Hasni Abidi, an analyst at the Geneva-based CERMAM Study Center, said turnout was a key issue for Tebboune, who wanted to be “a normal president, not a poorly elected one”.

‘Fraud’

Challenger Abdelaali Hassani Cherif, who heads the conservative Movement of Society for Peace, submitted his challenge to the vote count on Tuesday, a day after denouncing the results as “fraud”.

Youcef Aouchiche, head of the centre-left Socialist Forces Front, later followed suit, accusing ANIE of “forging” the result.

In an unprecedented move, all three campaigns – including Tebboune’s – also issued a joint statement late on Sunday alleging “irregularities” in ANIE’s results, adding they wanted to make the public aware of “vagueness and contradictions in the participation figures”.

The preliminary results announced by ANIE indicated Tebboune had won 94.65 percent of the vote with Hassani receiving 3.17 percent and Aouchiche 2.16 percent.

The final results gave Hassani 9.56 percent of the votes and Aouchiche 6.14 percent.

More than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote in this election out of a population of 45 million.

According to the figures released by the court, 11.2 million of them turned out on September 7 with 9.4 million valid ballots.