Algeria goes to the polls on Saturday to vote in a presidential election.
While incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is expected to win, observers will pay close attention to how many of the 24.5 million registered voters turn out.
In 2019, the year Tebboune was elected, turnout had been just 40 percent as a result of a boycott by most of the Hirak demonstrators, who had dominated the streets since February of that year.
Of that 40 percent, about 60 percent (nearly five million) had voted in favour of Tebboune.
This year, authorities are hoping to increase that figure, with all three candidates urging the public to vote. However, reports suggest that billboards remain empty and enthusiasm remains low.
Here’s a rundown of who will be on the ballot on Saturday:
Abdelmadjid Tebboune (incumbent since 2019)
Party: Independent. Formerly with the National Liberation Front (FLN) from 1991 to 2018
Age: 78
Tebboune served twice as minister of housing from 2001 to 2002, then again from 2012 to 2017.
Tebboune also served briefly as prime minister in 2017, appointed by former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to end suspected corruption in the government.
He was dismissed by Bouteflika after three months in 2017 with no reason given. However, anonymous sources spoke of Tebboune’s reforms proving unpopular with many of the commercial and industrial elites surrounding the president, referred to as “le pouvoir” (the power).
Following his time as prime minister, Tebboune quit Algeria’s leading party, the FLN, and was able to campaign for the presidency from outside a system that many in the protest movement claimed to have lost faith in.
Abdelaali Hassani Cherif
Party: Movement of Society for Peace (MSP)
Age: 57
On submitting his candidacy, he said the election is “an opportunity for reform, change and overcoming all the political, social and economic constraints Algeria has experienced”.
He represented his home region of M’Sila on the regional assembly for five years from 2002.
In 2007, he was elected to Algeria’s lower chamber, the People’s National Assembly, where he served until 2012.
Hassani Cherif then worked full-time for the MSP, a centrist Islamist party, concentrating on restructuring and modernising until he was elected as the party’s fifth president in August 2023.
Youcef Aouchiche
Party: Socialist Forces Front (FFS)
Age: 41
Active in student politics, Aouchiche joined the FFS at age 19.
Upon graduating in 2008, he became a journalist and then a parliamentary attache four years later, a position he held for five years.
In 2017, he stood successfully in local elections for the FFS representing his home district of Tizi Ouzou.
Aouchiche was elected first national secretary of the FFS in July 2020, then won a place in Algeria’s upper house of Parliament, the Council of the Nation, in February 2022.
On submitting his candidacy, Aouchiche said the FFS had an “ambitious” programme aimed at “all fringes and social categories whose interests we will defend”.
