Algerian president to face two challengers in September election

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, accused of leading a crackdown on dissent since mass protests in 2019, is to face two challengers in a Sept. 7 election, organizers said.

Abdelaali Hassani of the Movement of Society for Peace and Youssef Aouchiche of the center-left Socialist Forces Front are the two candidates who will stand against the 78-year-old incumbent.

The other 13 hopefuls all had their candidacies rejected after failing to muster the required number of signatures of support.

Tebboune, elected in 2019 with 58 percent of the vote following months of pro-democracy protests, announced in March that the presidential election would be held on Sept. 7.

A former prime minister under longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was ousted during the 2019 protests, Tebboune has overseen a crackdown on the Hirak movement that led the protests.

Taking advantage of the restrictions on gatherings required during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tebboune’s administration banned demonstrations by Hirak and stepped up prosecutions of dissident activists, journalists, and academics.

In February, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said that five years after the pro-democracy protests erupted, Algerian authorities were still restricting the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Also this week, Algeria expressed “great regret and strong denunciation” about the French government’s decision to recognize an autonomy plan for the Western Sahara region “within Moroccan sovereignty.”

Algeria was informed of the decision by France in recent days, an Algerian Foreign Ministry statement added.

The ministry also said Algeria would draw all the consequences from the decision and hold the French government completely responsible.

The French Foreign Ministry did not immediately comment on the Algerian statement.

Algeria’s position on the Western Sahara conflict is to implement a UN plan, which includes a self-determination referendum.

Algeria considers Morocco’s presence in the Sahara an occupation. Morocco considers Western Sahara its own, but an Algeria-backed independence movement, the Polisario Front, demands a sovereign state.

Morocco took over most of Western Sahara in 1975 from colonial Spain.

That started a guerrilla war with the Sahrawi people’s Polisario Front, which says the desert territory in the northwest of Africa belongs to it.

The UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991 and sent in a mission to help organize a referendum on the territory’s future, but the sides have been deadlocked since.