Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has announced he will run for president again in the elections scheduled for Sept. 7, Anadolu Agency reported on Thursday.
Tebboune, 78, who came to power in 2019 after the ouster of his predecessor, the late President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, by the youth-fuelled, pro-democracy Hirak movement, claimed in an interview on Algerian TV that his decision to run for a second term was in response to requests of political and non-political institutions as well as young people.
The military- and establishment-backed president declared in March that the gas-rich, North African nation of 45 million people will hold its presidential election in September, three months ahead of schedule.
Several major political groups, including the National Liberation Front, the Democratic National Rally, the Future Movement, and the National Construction Movement, have voiced support for Tebboune’s reelection campaign.
Tebboune’s announcement came a day after his visit to Tizi Ouzou in Kabylia, the mountainous Amazigh region that runs east and north from Algiers to the Mediterranean Sea. In a tweet on Wednesday ahead of Tebboune’s visit, Ferhat Mehenni, the President of the major political opposition Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), urged Kabyles to boycott the visit as an “affront” by the “Algerian terrorist state” to the “whole of Kabylia.”
500 Kabyle political prisoners, including 38 sentenced to death, are behind bars in Algeria, according to Mehenni. He called for “the release of all Kabyle political prisoners, the repeal of the scoundrel and terrorist article 87 bis of the Penal Code of June 2021, and the return to respect for fundamental freedoms in Kabylia.”
Kabyles boycotted the last election, with the region recording zero votes in 2019, according to official statistics.
The National Independent Authority for Elections said that up to 35 potential candidates have indicated an interest in running for president. Only three so far have gathered the number of signatures necessary to appear on the ballot. The deadline to submit candidate applications is July 18.