Algerians head to polls amid opposition calls to boycott the vote
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Algerians vote Thursday in the first elections since popular protests forced longtime leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power. The opposition, which is calling for voters to boycott the elections, held a protest in Algiers on the eve of the poll that was forcibly dispersed by police.
Algeria’s powerful army chief promises that a presidential election on Thursday will chart a new era for a nation where the highest office has stood vacant for eight months. The tenacious pro-democracy movement which forced leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign after 20 years in power doesn’t believe the claim and is boycotting the vote.
At stake in the election is whether Africa’s largest country, rich with oil and gas and a strategic partner of the West in countering terrorism, will get a fresh start with its next head of state, remain paralyzed by protests or suffer worse under a president lacking popular legitimacy.
A combo made of file photos showing the five Algerian presidential candidates (L-R) Abdelaziz Belaid, Azzedine Mihoubi, Ali Benflis, Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Abdelkader Bengrina (issued 11 December 2019). Five candidates are running in the 12 December presidential elections, the first since the former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika stepped down in April 2019. EPA-EFE/MOHAMED MESSARA/STRINGER
With public polling not permitted in Algeria, there was no firm indication on the eve of the election which of the five contenders may have the upper hand with voters. Another former prime minister, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 74, was until recently considered the favorite due to his reportedly close ties with Gaid Salah.
Now, the media are touting Azzedine Mihoubi, 60, a writer and poet with deep ties to the toppled Bouteflika regime. Mihoubi, a former culture minister, took over leadership of the National Democratic Rally party, which has governed in alliance with the FLN, the sole party for nearly three decades and now in tatters.
The other two candidates are Abdelaziz Belaid, 56, a former figure in the FLN who started his own party, and Abdelkader Bengrini, 57, a one-time tourism minister and member of the moderate Islamist party, the Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP), who started his own small Islamist party, el Bina, which like the MSP, backed Bouteflika.
