A Scandalous Fraud by Amateurs that Even the Re-Elected President Disputes
Unique in history. The scandal of the 2024 Algerian presidential election deserves to be marked with a black stone in Algeria’s history. Unprecedented. So obsessed with the voter turnout, the organizers ended up revealing figures that exposed the massive fraud. And thus, the scandal came to light.
By Hichem ABOUD
In our previous edition, we discussed a clear fraud in the inflated turnout rate of 48.03%. This figure was quietly announced at 00:48 through the government news agency APS, without being repeated the next day on television channels or mentioned by the president of the Independent National Electoral Authority (ANIE), Mohamed Charfi, during the announcement of the results showing Abdelmadjid Tebboune as the winner with a score reminiscent of the dark years: 94.65% of the votes.
This excessively inflated figure did not fail to catch the attention of observant observers, as we highlighted in our previous edition. At 5:00 p.m., the turnout was around 26.46%, but by 8:00 p.m., it had surged to 48.03%. As if, in just three hours, more than seven million Algerians had rushed to the polling stations. The fraud is blatant. Even Tebboune himself, in a statement issued late Sunday night, joins his competitors in protesting against this abuse. He distances himself from his mentors, who are the true authors of this scandal, which we now expose in detail.
Electoral fraud is a crime punishable by law
For this seventh edition of the pluralist presidential election in Algeria, the electoral body counted 5,630,196 registered voters.
According to the figures released by ANIE, Abdelmadjid Tebboune received 5,329,253 votes. Abdelali Hassani Cherif, the runner-up candidate, received 178,797 votes, followed closely by Aouchiche Youcef, the FFS candidate, who garnered a meager 122,146 votes.
The total number of votes for the three candidates amounts to 5,630,196 out of 24,351,551 registered voters. These figures do not, in any way, reflect a turnout rate of 48.03%. To reach this rate, 11,695,785 voters would be needed. So, where did the 6,366,505 voters go? It can’t be said that they were invalid ballots. In that case, the vote should be annulled because there would be more invalid ballots than votes for the “lucky winner.”
Without a doubt, there was indeed electoral fraud. This means that individuals lurking in the shadows have played with the future of an entire people and an entire country. This is an unforgivable crime. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in his capacity as the supreme magistrate of the country even before this election, must take responsibility. This scandal affects him more than any other official. He is the first to suffer from it. Remaining silent about such a scandal and showing indifference to the fraudsters in the shadows is to become complicit in an immeasurable betrayal. It is a betrayal of the trust of a people who have understood everything, and it turned out they were right to massively boycott this election. They knew that the regime in place was fraudulent. But no one imagined that the fraud would reach such a scale.
