In its presidential elections, Algeria prepares for ‘business as usual’

As Algerians head for the polls to vote in a presidential election, analysts say they do not expect big changes.

Of the 15 hopefuls who said they would run against incumbent president, 78-year-old Abdelmadjid Tebboune, only two received the requisite 600 signatures of support from elected officials, or the 50,000 public signatures from across the country.

Abdelaali Hassani Cherif hails from the moderate Islamist party, the Movement of Society for Peace, and Youcef Aouchiche from the centre-left Socialist Forces Front (FFS).

The candidacies of Hassani or Aouchiche are unlikely to trouble the incumbent greatly, Intissar Fakir, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute said.

Little chance of change 

“If you look at their programmes, nobody’s really presenting anything significantly different,” she said, outlining how none of the proposals from either candidate deviate in any meaningful way from existing government policy.

That Algeria’s fortunes have improved under Tebboune’s presidency is hard to dispute. The mass unrest that ushered him into power was eventually quelled, not through government action, but through the COVID pandemic.

Energy prices – Algeria’s principal export – which were low since 2014, recovered dramatically in 2022, with its main customer Europe scrambling to diversify its fuel sources following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

With renewed energy exports has come the influx of foreign currency, staving off prospective measures to cut the country’s generous subsidy system, covering health, housing, social benefits and energy.

Risk remains 

However, while victory at the polls may look assured, there remains a degree of risk for the president.

“In 2019 [the year Tebboune was elected], turnout was very low, with only a [small] proportion of those who did turn up voting for him. It’s not much of a mandate,”  Riccardo Fabiani, North African project director for the Crisis Group said of the overall measure of support for the president during the previous poll.

“This year, by bringing the vote forward to September [from December, the original date], Tebboune makes it hard for the opposition to campaign … during the hot summer months, as well as head off any challenge from a faction within Tebboune’s principal backers, the army,” Fabiani continued, alluding to the factionalism and politicking he said could be found in any large organisation.

“That’s not to say that any rival might threaten his victory, but they might undermine his mandate.”

Avoiding another Hirak 

The army’s support has proven crucial to a presidency born during the greatest period of civil unrest Algeria has experienced since the country’s civil war in the 1990s.

In 2019, widespread national unrest – the Hirak – erupted across the country following an announcement that octogenarian, wheelchair-bound President Abdelaziz Bouteflika sought to extend his near-20-year rule with a fifth term in office.

After weeks of unrest in which the future of the regime appeared in doubt, Bouteflika finally withdrew.

However, having gained momentum and forced their way into spaces typically heavily policed by the security services, the protests continued.

Through subsequent weeks and even years, vast numbers of people took to the streets to call for democratic accountability in Algeria and an end to the rule of what Algerians call Le Pouvoir (The Power) – an unknown shadow cabinet surrounding the presidency made up of shifting alliances of army, trade unions, industrialists and security services.

Numbers and biases within the Pouvoir change as individual factions jockey for influence. However, under Tebboune’s presidency, the army has been constantly dominant, Fabiani said.

Concerns over rights abuses 

Tebboune’s political direction has been clear in its absolute refusal to allow the re-emergence of the internal dissent perceived to have resulted in the Hirak.

“This next term is going to be all about continuation and succession,” Algerian analyst and former political prisoner Raouf Farrah said.

“Other than that, it’s going to be very much business as usual, while making very sure that nothing like the Hirak ever happens again,” he said.

The conclusion of the Hirak in 2021 saw the mass arrest of anyone perceived to have been involved, directly or indirectly, with the protests.

In July of this year, Amnesty International condemned the Algerian authorities’ five years of targeting dissenting voices, “whether they are protesters, journalists or people expressing their views on social media”.

As of June, an estimated 220 people were in jail for their part in the Hirak, among them Farrah; freed in October 2023 after having his sentence – disputed by rights groups – on charges of publishing classified documents and receiving money from a foreign government reduced.