IN ALGERIA THE PRESIDENT HAS PENALTY ELECTED

CONTESTED BY THE STREET

Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 74, was elected president in the first round of the election on Thursday, December 12, 2019 in Algeria with 58.15% of the vote, according to preliminary results announced on Friday by Mohamed Charfi, the president of the National Authority independent of elections (ANIE).

Presented as the preferred candidate of the army, the septuagenarian, former close to the deposed president, won after a vote marked by a record abstention.

The participation rate was indeed 41.13%, the lowest of all the pluralist presidential elections in the country's history.

There will be no second round in Algeria.

A 74-year-old president.

Abdelmadjid Tebboune was presented by the Algerian press as the favorite and the preferred candidate of the army. Of the five candidates in the running, all born in the house of the regime, he passed for the closest to the strong man of the country, the general of the army Ahmed Gaïd Salah and Bouteflika. But the former Prime Minister sought to get rid of this image and presented himself as the "candidate of the people".

"Your mandate is a born dead mandate. "

In the afternoon, a demonstration against the newly elected president began in downtown Algiers. The latter reacted, saying he wanted to "reach out" to "Hirak", the unprecedented popular protest movement that has been shaking Algeria for almost ten months. But the demonstrators marched en masse, after Friday prayers, to reject this ballot, chanting that "the vote is rigged, your elections do not concern us and your president will not govern us".

The protesters continue to demand the end of the “system” in charge since independence, in 1962, and the departure of all the former supporters or collaborators of the 20 years of presidency Bouteflika.