Algerians expected an uneventful election that would bestow President Abdelmadjid Tebboune a second term. Instead, they got the president himself calling into question the vote count and legal challenges from his opponents alleging fraud.
Such a surprising turn of events marks a departure for Algeria, where elections have historically been carefully choreographed by the ruling elite and military apparatus that backs it.
The country’s constitutional court has until next week to rule on the appeals from Tebboune’s two opponents. But it’s anyone’s guess how questions about the election will be resolved, whether tallies will be re-tabulated and what it means for Tebboune’s efforts to project an image of legitimacy and popular support.
WHAT’S THE CONFUSION?
Algeria’s National Independent Election Authority, or ANIE, published figures throughout election day showing a low turnout. By 5 p.m. on Saturday, the reported turnout in Algeria was 26.5 percent — far fewer than had voted by that time in the election five years ago. After unexplained delays, it said “provisional average turnout” by 8 p.m. had spiked to 48 percent.
But the next day, it reported that only 5.6 million out of nearly 24 million voters had cast ballots — nowhere near 48 percent.
It said 94.7 percent voted to re-elect Tebboune. His two challengers — Abdelali Hassani Cherif of the Movement of Society for Peace and Youcef Aouchiche of the Socialist Forces Front — won a dismal 3.2 percent and 2.2 percent of the vote, respectively.
Cherif, Aouchiche and their campaigns subsequently questioned how results were reported and alleged foul play including pressure placed on poll workers and proxy voting.
None of that surprised observers.
But later, Tebboune’s campaign joined with his opponents in releasing a shared statement rebuking ANIE for “inaccuracies, contradictions, ambiguities and inconsistencies,” legitimizing questions about the president’s win and aligning him with popular anger that his challengers had drummed up.
Cherif and Aouchiche filed appeals at Algeria’s constitutional court on Tuesday after their campaigns further rebuked the election as “a masquerade.”
WHY IS VOTER TURNOUT CLOSELY WATCHED IN ALGERIA’S ELECTION?
Turnout is notoriously low in Algeria, where activists consider voting tantamount to endorsing a corrupt, military-led system rather than something that can usher in meaningful change.
Urging Algerians to participate in the election was a campaign theme for Tebboune as well as his challengers. That’s largely due to the legacy of the pro-democracy “Hirak” protests that led to the ouster of Tebboune’s predecessor.
After an interim government that year hurriedly scheduled elections in December 2019, protesters boycotted them, calling them rigged and saying they were a way for the ruling elite to handpick a leader and avoid the deeper changes demanded.
Tebboune, seen as the military’s preferred candidate, won with 58 percent of the vote. But more than 60 percent of the country’s 24 million voters abstained and his victory was greeted with fresh rounds of protests.
His supporters had hoped for a high turnout victory this year would project Tebboune’s popular support and put distance between Algeria and the political crisis that toppled his predecessor. It appears that gambit failed after only 5.6 million out of 24 million voters participated.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HIRAK PROTESTS?
In 2019, millions of Algerians flooded the streets for pro-democracy protests that became known as the “Hirak” (which means movement in Arabic).
Protesters were outraged after 81-year-old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced plans to run for a fifth term. He had rarely been seen since a 2013 stroke left him paralyzed. The Hirak was jubilant but unsatisfied when Bouteflika resigned and top businessmen were charged with corruption. Protesters never coalesced around leaders or a new vision for Algeria, but called for deeper reforms to foster genuine democracy and remove from power members of what Algerians simply call “the power” — the elites from business, politics and the military thought to run the country.
Hirak protesters rejectedTebboune as a member of the old guard and interpreted most of his earlyovertures as empty gestures meant to placate them.
Before, during and after Tebboune’s election, protests continued. Then, COVID-19 hit and they were outlawed. Authorities continued to repress freedom of expression and imprison journalists and activists made famous by the pro-democracy movement, though protests restarted in 2021.
Figures from the Hirak denounced the 2024 election as a rubber stamp exercise to entrench Algeria’s status quo and called for another round of boycotts to express a deep lacking of faith in the system. Many said the high abstention rate in Saturday’s election proved Algerians were still aligned with their criticisms of the system.
“Algerians don’t give a damn about this bogus election,” said former Hirak leader Hakim Addad, who was banned from participating in politics three years ago. “The political crisis will persist as long as the regime remains in place. The Hirak has spoken.”
WHAT DOES TEBBOUNE QUESTIONING THE RESULTS MEAN?
Nobody knows. Few believe the challenges could lead to Tebboune’s victory being overturned.
Op-ed columnists and political analysts in Algeria have condemned ANIE, the independent election authority established in 2019, and its president Mohamed Charfi, for bungling elections that the government hoped would project its own legitimacy in the face of its detractors.
Hasni Abidi, an Algeria analyst at the Geneva-based Center for Studies and Research on the Arab World and Mediterranean, called it “a mess within the regime and the elite” and said it dealt a blow to both the credibility of institutions in Algeria and Tebboune’s victory.
Some argue his willingness to join opponents and criticize an election that he won suggest infighting among the elite thought to control Algeria.
“The reality is that this remains a more fragmented, less coherent political system than it ever has been or than people have ever assumed,” said Riccardo Fabiani, International Crisis Group’s North Africa director.
WHAT ARE THE STAKES?
Though Tebboune will likely emerge the winner, the election will reflect the depth of support for his political and economic policies five years after the pro-democracy movement toppled his predecessor.
Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area. With almost 45 million people, it’s the continent’s second most populous after South Africa to hold presidential elections in 2024 — a year in which more than 50 elections are being held worldwide, encompassing more than half the world’s population.
Thanks to oil and gas revenue, the country is relatively wealthy compared to its neighbors, yet large segments of the population have in recent years decried increases in the cost of living and routine shortages of staples including cooking oil and, in some regions, water.
The country is a linchpin to regional stability, often acting as a power broker and counterterrorism ally to western nations as neighboring countries — including Libya, Niger and Mali — are convulsed by violence, coups and revolution.
It’s a major energy supplier, especially to European countries trying to wean themselves off Russian gas and maintains deep, albeit contentious, ties with France, the colonial power that ruled it for more than a century until 1962.
The country spends twice as much on defense as any other in Africa and is the world’s third largest importer of Russian weapons after India and China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfers Database.
Algeria election results are being questioned by the opposition candidates and the president himself
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Algeria election results are being questioned by the opposition candidates and the president himself
- Algeria is Africa’s largest country by area. With almost 45 million people, it’s the continent’s second most populous after South Africa to hold presidential elections in 2024
UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN
- UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started
- UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013
UNITED NATIONS: The arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza does not bar UN officials from meeting with him in the course of their work, the UN said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started as a result of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, although there have been contacts with the Israeli leader by UN officials in the region.
Guterres has been declared persona non grata by Israel, which accuses him of being biased in favor of the Palestinians. So talks between him and Netanyahu are very unlikely.
After the warrants issued Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013.
“The rule is that there should not be any contacts between UN officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants,” Dujarric said.
But limited contacts are allowed “to address fundamental issues, operational issues, and our ability to carry out our mandates,” he added.
In late October, at a summit of the BRICS countries in Russia, Guterres met with President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the ICP over the war in Ukraine.
That meeting, during which Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Russian invasion, angered Ukraine.
Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister
- Palestinian Authority calls on UN member states to ensure the warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who are accused of war crimes, are acted upon
- The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, says decision is ‘binding’ on all members of the International Criminal Court
LONDON: Palestinians welcomed the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.
The Palestinian Authority said the court’s decision comes as Israeli forces continue to bomb Gaza in a conflict that has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and it hopes the ruling will help to restore faith in international law, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.
Netanyahu and Gallant are the first leading officials from a nation allied with the West against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants since the court was established in July 2002. It also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of the military wing of Hamas. Israeli authorities said in August he was killed by their forces in an attack the previous month, though Hamas have not confirmed this.
All three men are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their actions during the war in Gaza or the Oct. 7 attacks.
The PA said the decision to issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was important because Palestinians “are being subjected to genocide and war crimes, represented by starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as mass displacement and collective punishment.
The PA, which signed up to the ICC in 2015, called on all UN member states to ensure the warrants are acted upon and to “cut off contact and meetings with the international wanted men, Netanyahu and Gallant.” Israel is not a member of the ICC.
The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, posted a message on social media platform X on Thursday in which he described the court’s decisions as “binding” on all those who have signed up to it.
“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), which includes all EU member states,” he wrote.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has spent 17 years in office during three spells in charge since 1996, denounced the decision by the ICC to issue the warrant as “antisemitic.”
He said it would “have serious consequences for the court and those who will cooperate with it in this matter.”
Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border
MASNAA, Lebanon: Stuck in no man’s land on the war-hit Lebanon-Syria border, cab driver Fadi Slika now scrapes a living ferrying passengers between two deep craters left by Israeli air strikes.
The journey is just 2 km, but Slika has no other choice — his taxi is his only source of income.
“My car is stuck between craters: I can’t reach Lebanon or return to Syria. Meanwhile, we’re under threat of (Israeli) bombardment,” said the 56-year-old.
“I work and sleep here between the two holes,” he said.
A dual Lebanese-Syrian national, Slika has been living in his car, refusing to abandon it when it broke down until a mechanic brought a new engine.
His taxi is one of the few that has been operating between the two craters since Israeli strikes in October effectively blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.
The bombed area has become a boon for drivers of tuk-tuks, who can navigate the craters easily.
A makeshift stall, the Al-Joura (pit in Arabic) rest house, and a shop are set up nearby.
Slika went for 12 days without work while waiting for his taxi to be fixed. The car has become his home. A warm blanket covers its rear seats against eastern Lebanon’s cold winters, and a big bag of pita bread sits on the passenger side.
Before being stranded, Slika made about $100 for trips from Beirut to Damascus.
Now, an average fare between the craters is just $5.50 each way, though he said he charged more.
On Sept. 23, Israel intensified its aerial bombing of Lebanon and later sent in ground troops, nearly a year after Hezbollah initiated limited exchanges of fire in support of Hamas amid the Gaza war.
Since then, Israel has bombed several land crossings with Syria out of service.
It accuses Hezbollah of using what are key routes for people fleeing the war in Lebanon to transfer weapons from Syria.
Amid the hardship of the conflict, more than 610,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria, mostly Syrians, according to Lebanese authorities.
Undeterred by attacks, travelers still trickle through Masnaa, traversing the two craters that measure about 10 meters deep and 30 meters wide.
On the other side of the road, Khaled Khatib, 46, was fixing his taxi, its tires splattered with mud and hood coated in dust.
“After the first strike, I drove from Syria and parked my car before the crater. When the second strike hit, I got stuck between the two holes,” he said, sweat beading as he looked under the hood.
“We used to drive people from Damascus to Beirut. Now, we take them from one crater to another.”
Khatib doesn’t charge passengers facing tough times, he said, adding he had been displaced from southern Beirut, hammered by Israeli raids since September. He moved back to his hometown near the Masnaa crossing.
Despite harsh times, a sense of camaraderie reigns.
The drivers “became like brothers. We eat together at the small stall every day ... and we help each other fix our cars,” he said.
Mohamed Yassin moved his coffee stall from the Masnaa crossing closer to the pit after the strike, offering breakfast, lunch, and coffee. “We try to help people as much as possible,” he said.
Farther from the Lebanese border, travelers crossed the largest of the two crevasses, wearing plastic coverings on their shoes to avoid slipping in the mud.
A cab driver on a mound called out, “Taxi to Damascus!” while tuk-tuks and trucks ferried passengers, bags, and mattresses across.
Nearby, Aida Awda Mubarak, a Syrian mother of six, haggled with a tuk-tuk driver over the $1 fare.
The 52-year-old said she was out of work and needed to see her son after the east Lebanon town where he lives was hit by Israeli strikes.
“Sometimes we just can’t afford to pay for a tuk-tuk or a cab,” she said.
Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself
- “No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said
- The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity“
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court over his conduct of the Gaza war would not stop him defending Israel.
“No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not yield to pressure,” he vowed.
The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
He described Thursday’s decision as a “dark day in the history of nations.”
“The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the accusations were “utterly baseless.”
Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Its retaliatory campaign has led to the deaths of 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
UN agencies have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including possible famine, due to a lack of food and medicines.
The court said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes,” while ignoring “the real war crimes, horrific war crimes being committed against us and against many others around the world.”
In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military wing chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel said was killed in an air strike last July.
Hamas has never confirmed his death.
Netanyahu mocked the court’s decision to issue a warrant for “the body of Mohammed Deif.”
Italy says would have to arrest Netanyahu after ICC warrant
- Crosetto believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas
- It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants
ROME: Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Thursday his country would be obliged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant.
The ICC earlier also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu’s former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
Crosetto — whose country holds the G7 rotating presidency this year — told RAI television’s Porta a Porta program that he believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas.
But he said that if Netanyahu or Gallant “were to come to Italy, we would have to arrest them.”
It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants, Crosetto said.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had earlier been more cautious, saying: “We support the ICC, while always remembering that the court must play a legal role and not a political role.
“We will evaluate together with our allies what to do and how to interpret this decision.”