Algeria: constitutional referendum marked by record abstention

Election agents empty a ballot box in a polling station in Algiers on November 1, 2020. REUTERS / Ramzi Boudina

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Algerians were called to vote this Sunday for or against the revision of the Constitution.

A project initiated by the president and presented by the government as supposed to meet the aspirations of Hirak.

The Algerians massively shunned this election.

According to the independent national elections authority, the turnout was less than 24%.

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In a message broadcast by the official APS press agency, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune affirmed that the Algerian people would once again be at the rendezvous with history to establish a new era.

A reference to the date chosen for this referendum: November 1 marks the start of the war of independence against the French colonial power, in 1954.

But to calls from power to vote for a new Algeria, voters overwhelmingly respond

.

A feeling that already seemed to dominate the electoral campaign, during which opponents of the project were not allowed to hold a meeting.

Hirak supporters called for a boycott of the ballot.

In Kabylia, a region known to be rebellious, local media claim that many polling stations have even remained closed.

Even if the protest movement has been less visible for several months, since the weekly marches are suspended due to the coronavirus, their appeal therefore seems to have been heard.

Whatever the result, it is probably abstention that will be retained.

Last December, for the presidential election, the participation rate, just under 40%, was already historically low.

A revision of the Constitution which has been very little debated, which was carried out by the same people who had written the previous Constitutions, that does not convince the majority of the population, in any case those who were in the streets a few years ago. months yet to demand the change.

For the regime, it is a way of legitimizing itself again by claiming that the motives for demonstrating are no longer necessary since there is a new Constitution.

Akram Belkaid

Fanny Bleichner

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