Algerian opposition candidates Abdelali Hassani Sharif and Youssef Ouchich legally challenged the preliminary results of Algeria’s presidential election, issuing a severe rebuke to election officials and disputing the vote counting.
The challenge was submitted to the Algerian Constitutional Court on Tuesday by Abdelali Hassani Sharif and Youssef Ouchich, marking the first required step to contest the election results, which showed incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune winning with 94.7% of the vote.
Algerian law gives the court a 10-day period from the announcement of the preliminary results to decide on the challenges.
The ruling could require the National Independent Authority for Elections to recount the votes for each candidate without disputing Tebboune’s victory, who has already begun receiving congratulatory messages from Algeria’s foreign allies.
A day before filing their challenges, the candidates sharply criticized Mohamed Charfi, the head of Algeria’s National Independent Authority for Elections, for the manner in which Saturday’s election results were announced. Sharif commented, “President Tebboune did not need this show of force. We knew he would be reelected, but with these results, the Authority did not do him any favors. We want our votes – the votes of the people who voted for us – to be returned to us. We know this will not change the outcome of the vote, but it will be recorded in history.”
Meanwhile, Ouchich held a press conference where his campaign manager presented charts that allegedly proved the results had been manipulated, describing it as “shameful and blatant tampering.” He added, “These results, which do not match at all with the vote counts reported to us by the regional delegations of the same National Committee, are a stain on Algeria 2024, taking us back to the 1970s,” referring to a time when the only legal political party in the country selected its candidate by acclamation.
The opposition candidates objected to discrepancies between the number of votes announced at the counting and the turnout statistics released by election officials the day before. In a joint statement, the campaign managers of both Ouchich and Sharif expressed doubts about the results published by the National Independent Authority for Elections and how they did not correspond with the regional statistics announced by local authorities. They wrote, “We inform the national public opinion that inaccuracies, inconsistencies, ambiguities, and contradictions were noted when the head of the National Independent Authority for Elections announced the preliminary results of the presidential elections.”
