Algerian presidential election: Incumbent Tebboune 'all but locked up the vote'

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00:00I'm joined in the studio now by our international affairs commentator, Doug Herbert. Hi, Doug.

00:04How are you, Axie?

00:05I'm well, thank you. So this is, of course, a massive election.

00:07Algeria, we often forget, is Africa's largest country by surface area.

00:11Although there is something of a sense that the result of this election is a foregone conclusion.

00:17Yeah, there's a little bit of a whiff of Russian elections in the air or Venezuela

00:21elections, to name a few. And why? Look, to be sure, Algeria has never in its 62 years

00:28since independence from France had an entirely smooth transfer of power. This election is

00:33shaping up to be no exception to that historical rule. And why so? The incumbent president,

00:40he has served one five-year term. He is going for a second five-year term.

00:44Abdallah Majid Tabun, he has been touting his economic record, rising wages, rising incomes

00:50for Algerians. And he wants to sort of run on that platform. The problem is most Algerians,

00:55and I underline most, not all, will have nothing of it. They're not hearing any of that.

01:00What they see instead is a president who has locked up the vote, all but locked up the vote,

01:06due to a strong network of political patronage, political patrons around him. More importantly,

01:12perhaps, he was the preferred pick of the military when he first ran five years ago in 2019.

01:18And he's the preferred pick of the army once again in 2024. So he has a political patronage.

01:23He has the army behind him. People also object to the fact that he has kept Algeria highly

01:28dependent on fossil fuels, hydrocarbons. Yeah, one of the world's biggest natural gas producers.

01:33It's benefited greatly from that over the COVID. A lot of customers came to Algeria as an alternative

01:37for their gas after the Russia-Ukrainian war as well. So he's benefited from that. But like I said,

01:44most opponents, if not all, have been locked out of this election. We say he is all but locked up

01:49the vote. He does have two rivals. But sort of as in the Russian elections, the rivals are rivals

01:55in name only in the sense that they don't pose any real threat. They're there as sort of token

01:59oppositionists. One is from a centrist Islamist party, the Movement of Society for Peace,

02:05it's called. And the other is from the Socialist Forces Front. He's a secularist candidate. And the

02:12reason, presumably, a lot of people think he was chosen and allowed to run out of 16 candidates,

02:1813 were rejected, is because his party has strong support among the Berbers of Algeria, a group that

02:24in the 2019 elections, almost zero people in that region of Algeria, zero voted in the election,

02:300.04%. So he's trying to get a lens, a veneer of legitimacy, because last time in 2019, massive

02:38abstention, as you noted, marked the elections, over 60% failed to show up. So it was a massive,

02:47abstention thing. He wants to have some more turnout this time.

02:49And just quickly, Doug, among some of those candidates barred from running,

02:52some prominent Algerian women.

02:54Yeah, I said 13 were barred, very hard to collect signatures for all of this.

02:58Two notable women candidates who have been contesting their disqualification were excluded.

03:04One was the head of the General Confederation of Algerian Enterprises. She accused the government

03:10of basically persecuting the heads of big businesses. She tried to actually sue the

03:14government to get back on the on the ballot. And another is a former magistrate, the other woman

03:19who was disqualified, former magistrate, who's been a staunch defender of a lot of those

03:24anti-government protesters from back in 2019, who are locked up, thrown in jail.

03:28They're called the Herak movement. She's been trying to defend them, staunch advocate, trying

03:32to get them out. Both of those women, you won't see their names anywhere in this election on the

03:36ballot.

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