Algeria candidates question result of presidential vote

The two unsuccessful candidates in Algeria's presidential election contested on Monday the turnout and percentage of votes they won in the weekend ballot, denouncing a "fraud".

Speaking to reporters in the capital Algiers, Islamist candidate Abdelaali Hassani nonetheless conceded to incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who won with a landslide of nearly 95 percent of the vote on Saturday, according to the country's electoral authority, ANIE.

Hassani, who heads the moderate Islamist party the Movement of Society for Peace, said he had "lost the battle but not the war".

He was one of only two challengers to Tebboune, the second being Youcef Aouchiche of the centre-left Socialist Forces Front (FFS).

At a press conference, Aouchiche said "the country finds itself in a very uncomfortable, even dangerous situation".

"ANIE bears full responsibility for these dangerous deviations that undermine the election," he said, vowing an appeal against the preliminary figures to the Constitutional Court.

The court is expected to review all appeals and validate the final results.

The other challenger, Hassani, had earlier denounced "false figures" on voter turnout and demanded that authorities put a stop to the "masquerade".

He also disputed the percentage of the vote he was declared to have won, which was only 3.17 percent according to ANIE's figures, which gave Aouchiche 2.15 percent.

Tebboune, 78, was widely expected to breeze through the election and was focused instead on securing a high turnout.

He was elected in December 2019 with 58 percent of the vote, despite a record abstention rate exceeding 60 percent, amid the massive Hirak pro-democracy protests.

- 'Not a surprise' -

More than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote this year but ANIE on Sunday did not give an official turnout rate.

Instead, it announced a "provisional average turnout" rate of 48 percent, calculating it as the average of the turnout from different electoral districts, rather than the total number of voters compared to registered voters.

That came after it had announced an "average participation rate of 26 percent" at 5:00 PM local time (0400 GMT), seven percent lower than at the same point in 2019, and extended the voting period by an hour.

When it announced Tebboune's victory, it said he received 5.32 million votes out of a total 5.63 million, accounting for 94.65 percent of the vote.

In an unprecedented move, however, all three campaigns -- including Tebboune's -- issued a joint statement late Sunday alleging "irregularities" in ANIE's results, adding they wanted to make the public aware of "vagueness and contradictions in the participation figures".

The authority later responded, saying it was still in the process of receiving the official documentation outlining the turnout at districts and would subsequently forward them to the constitutional court.

Analyst Hasni Abidi said Tebboune's landside was "not a surprise" but that the incumbent failed to mobilise voters.

"He gains only 319,000 votes since 2019 and attracted just over five million voters out of 24 million registered, less than a quarter," said Abidi, head of the Geneva-based CERMAM research centre.