Bouteflika-Era PM Elected Algeria’s New President

Date: 13 December 2019 - 22:13

News ID: ۷۳۸۵۴

ALGIERS (AFP) -- A former Algerian prime minister who served under deposed leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president of the protest-wracked country after a vote marred by unrest and low turnout, results showed Friday.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 74, took 58.15 percent of the vote, trouncing his four fellow contenders without the need for a second-round runoff, electoral commission chairman Mohamed Charfi announced.
Like him, they all served under the two-decade rule of Bouteflika, 82, who resigned in the face of mass demonstrations in April.
The deeply unpopular election had been championed by the army as a way of restoring stability after almost 10 months of street protests.
But on polling day Thursday, protesters defied a heavy police presence to hold a mass rally in the heart of the capital Algiers and smaller demonstrations in provincial cities.
All five candidates -- who included another former prime minister, Ali Benflis, 75, and an ex-minister, Azzedine Mihoubi -- were widely rejected by protesters as "children of the regime”.
A record six in 10 Algerians abstained in the vote, Charfi said, the highest rate for a multi-party election since independence from France in 1962.
Tens of thousands rallied in central Algiers, where police with water cannon and helicopters tried to disperse protesters.
On Friday, protesters prepared to take to the streets again in response to calls on social media under the slogan "Tebboune is not my president”.
In the mountain region of Kabylie, home to much of the country’s Berber minority and historically opposed to the central government, protesters ransacked polling stations and clashed with police, residents said.
Tebboune faces a difficult task to be accepted by the electorate in the North African country, where many citizens see the government as inept, corrupt and unable to manage the flagging economy.
He served in Bouteflika’s government from 1999 to 2002 as communications and then housing minister. He returned as housing minister from 2012 to 2017 when he was briefly appointed prime minister.
But he was sacked by Bouteflika after just three months for criticizing some of the president’s inner circle, many of whom are now in jail on corruption charges.
Since the start of the campaign, Tebboune has sought to distance himself from his years of service under Bouteflika.