ALGIERS: Algeria's President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has won a second term with 84.3 per cent of the vote in last week's election, final results announced Saturday showed, down from an initial count contested by rivals.
The preliminary results issued by the North African country's electoral authority ANIE on Sunday gave Tebboune nearly 95 per cent support, prompting other candidates to challenge the results in appeals to the Constitutional Court.
The court's president, Omar Belhadj, announced on Saturday the official count, with Tebboune far ahead of his only two challengers.
"We announce that Mr Abdelmadjid Tebboune is elected for a second term, and will assume his responsibilities when he swears in," Belhadj said in remarks broadcast live on national TV and radio stations.
The 78-year-old incumbent had been widely expected to breeze through the election and was focused instead on securing a high turnout, which according to Belhadj stood at 46.1 per cent in the September 7 ballot.
More than 24 million Algerians were registered to vote in this election.
Tebboune was elected in December 2019 with 58 per cent of the vote, despite a record abstention rate above 60 per cent, amid the mass Hirak pro-democracy protests.
Presidential candidate Abdelaali Hassani, who heads the Movement of Society for Peace, on Tuesday submitted his challenge to the vote count, a day after denouncing the results as "fraud".
Youcef Aouchiche, head of the centre-left Socialist Forces Front, later followed suit, accusing the electoral authority ANIE of "forging" the result.
In an unprecedented move, all three campaigns -- including Tebboune's -- also 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 preliminary results announced by ANIE said that Tebboune had won "94.65 per cent of the vote", with Hassani receiving 3.17 per cent and Aouchiche 2.16 per cent.
The final results gave Hassani 9.56 per cent of the votes, and Aouchiche 6.14 per cent.
Tebboune became president after widely boycotted elections and mass pro-democracy protests from 2019 that died out under his tenure as policing ramped up and hundreds were put in jail.
He had touted economic successes during his first term, including more jobs and higher wages in Africa's largest exporter of natural gas.
Although Algeria's economy has grown at an annual rate of about four percent over the past two years, it remains heavily dependent on oil and gas to fund its social programmes. - AFP
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