September 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Algerian President Abdelmayid Tebboune’s two rivals in Saturday’s election have announced they will take legal action to protest the results announced by the electoral commission, following irregularities that have also been denounced by the president’s campaign.
The leader of the Islamist Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), Abdelali Hasani Cherif, has again pointed to “contradictory” figures in the announcement of the electoral commission and has announced that the party “will file an appeal before the Constitutional Court to correct the errors detected.”
He has thus assured that the party “will adhere to peaceful and democratic actions, as an opposition party faithful to its principles in the service of the country and its stability,” while defending its decision to stand for president as part of “a political and moral responsibility.”
“We are convinced that democratic activism begins with elections,” Cherif stressed, adding that “the MSP has contributed to breathing new life into the political scene by participating in this important opportunity,” according to the Algerian state news agency, APS.
For his part, the secretary general of the Frente de Fuerzas Socialistas (FFS), Yucef Auchiche, has again stressed that the announcement by the electoral commission “does not correspond” with the figures from the verbal processes in several voting centres and has announced that the party “reserves the right to adopt the legal measures it considers appropriate to preserve the decision of the voters”.
Auchiche also called for an investigation to be opened “to determine responsibilities” and noted that “the Independent National Electoral Authority (ANIE) is supposed to guarantee the transparency of the entire electoral operation.”
He stressed that the joint statement published on Sunday by the three candidates’ campaigns to denounce these discrepancies in the data “can lay the foundations for new political action and allow for finding common ground on issues of interest to the nation.”
The three candidates denounced “imprecisions, contradictions, ambiguities and inconsistencies” in the figures announced by ANIE, which gave Tebune the victory with more than 94 percent of the votes, guaranteeing him a second term in office in the African country.
ANIE president Mohamed Charfi announced Tebune’s victory late on Sunday, with 94.65 percent of the votes cast. Behind him were Cherif, with 3.17 percent, and Auchiche, with 2.16 percent.
Tebune, 78, took office after elections in 2019, which ended a brief transition period after long-time leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned in April amid massive protests against his plans to run for a fifth term despite being barred from office due to health problems.
The president, who has the support of the Army and the coalition made up of the historic National Liberation Front (FLN) and the National Democratic Group, was seeking a second term amid complaints about repression against opponents and activists and growing skepticism among the population about the country’s management.
Indeed, Amnesty International recently accused the authorities of limiting freedoms in the country. Amjad Yamin, the NGO’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, denounced that the country has suffered in recent years a “continued erosion of human rights” through the dissolution of parties, civil organisations and independent media, as well as the increase in “arbitrary arrests and prosecutions using false charges of terrorism”.
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