Few were surprised when 74-year-old Abdelmadjid Tebboune won Algeria’s Dec. 12 presidential election. With his campaign set amid overwhelming public anger, Tebboune secured more than 50% of a vote marred by record low turnout and public resistance. Nevertheless, his majority was enough to avoid a potentially damaging runoff and an extension of a tumultuous chapter in Algeria’s recent history. 

Algeria’s protesters, who for months have turned out in the thousands every Friday, voiced opposition to what they saw as an intrinsically corrupt poll. All five presidential candidates were from the country’s political establishment, which demonstrators see as enjoying an opaque relationship with a cabal of senior army officers, trade unionists and businesspeople, known collectively as the pouvoir.

Hopes that Tebboune’s election could draw a line under this volatile period may prove ill-founded. The day of the vote was marked by countrywide mass protests, with demonstrators causing a number of polling stations to close. The announcement of Tebboune’s victory the following day did little to quell public anger.

While major confrontation was avoided, the police still employed heavy-handed tactics in response to the protests. In Algiers, as the polls opened, an older woman was bundled into the back of a police van after talking to a Western journalist about her decision to not vote. In the northwest city of Oran, the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights reported that 400 people were arrested over the course of the election.