Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was declared the victor of yesterday’s presidential election. Preliminary results from the Algerian government showed Tebboune, who took office in 2019, winning around 95 percent of the vote. Algeria’s electoral commission said turnout was around 48 percent. (Reuters)
Our Take
2024 has been dubbed the “year of elections,” but in truth, many of those votes, such as the presidential contest yesterday in Algeria, are more like selections. In Algeria’s case, the military-led regime—which has governed the country since its independence from France in 1962—vets and orchestrates the cast of characters that run the country’s civilian government.
Yesterday’s vote is important symbolically, though, as it formally closes the book on the era that began in February 2019, when mass protests rocked Algeria. Initially, the Hirak, or “movement,” mobilized to protest the regime’s decision to stand the ailing, 84-year-old then-President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for reelection. But it quickly morphed into a pro-democracy uprising, staging mass demonstrations on a weekly basis. By April of that year, Bouteflika had resigned, and in December, Tebboune won a managed election that did little to sway the protesters.