Algeria held parliamentary elections on Saturday that the ruling establishment hopes will turn a page on political unrest amid a crackdown on dissent, but even by mid afternoon few people had voted.
Two years after mass demonstrations forced a veteran president to step down in Algeria’s biggest political crisis for decades, the authorities are still struggling to quell the protest movement.
Saturday’s vote followed a presidential election in 2019 and a referendum on an amended constitution last year, but many Algerians still think real power is wielded by the army and security forces.
Polls closed at 19: 00 GMT and results are expected on Sunday. The election authority said only 14.5% of voters had cast ballots with four hours left to vote. By comparison, some 33% had voted with three hours left to vote in the 2019 election, when final turnout was 40%.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said decisions were made by the majority of those who voted, regardless of turnout.
“This election is a new step to build a new Algeria,” he said after voting outside the capital, Algiers.
Schoolteacher Ali Djemai, 33, started queuing early to cast his vote in the city. “We hope the next parliament will be a force pressing for change that the majority want,” he said.
But in the Kabylie region, often a focus of political opposition, riot police guarded polling stations where activists sought to burn ballot boxes and some voting centres closed early.
The “Hirak” protest movement that forced Abdelaziz Bouteflika from the presidency two years ago wants to oust the old ruling elite and stop the army interfering in politics. It sees any elections before that as a charade.
“Elections will not give the regime legitimacy, and repression and arrests will not stop the people’s peaceful revolution,” said Samir Belarbi, a prominent Hirak figure.
Though the government publicly welcomed Hirak as a movement of national renewal and jailed senior former officials, police also cracked down on it with arrests.
