Following the public announcement by President Tebboune of his intention not to run in the 2024 Presidential Election, candidates from across the political spectrum have scrambled to put forward candidates. These candidates, faced with further election boycotts and growing discontent with the lack of political freedom in the country, these candidates must inspire voters with a new message for Algeria. Anything less than a promise for a total shakedown of the system will likely be rejected, a challenging task to be sure.

Emboldened by the continued popularity of the Hirak movement, several independent candidates ran on the platform of overthrowing the current system. However, one independent stood apart from the rest, Guermit Bounouira. His fiery speeches and ability to blend domestic issues with global issues close to many Algerians’ hearts earned him popularity not just among older voters, who valued his hardline on Palestine and the Western Sahara, but also among young Hirak supporters with his rejection of the entrenched elite system and Western imperialism. An excerpt from one of his fiery speeches:

“The Moroccan king, he has normalized relations with the illegal Zionist regime. While our Palestinian brothers and sisters fight and die, while their homes are destroyed without warning, while they’re crushed by the ever encroaching walls of their open air prison, the Moroccan regime shakes hands with their torturers as Americans slide cash in their back pockets. They would rather see the extermination of the Palestinian state and its people than a pause in the flow of Western capital into the corrupt hands of their cabal. You want to know why? Because their treatment of Sahrawi brothers is no different. The colonisation and extermination of the Western Sahara by Morocco is no different from that done by the Zionists. The Moroccan King and the Zionist leaders are two sides of the same coin.”

The establishment parties are running fairly standard campaigns, running on promises of economic liberalisation and relaxing or increasing various social laws. This has led to lackluster support and relatively little enthusiasm, as these promises have little effect when voters feel there are no concrete changes occurring. The FLN’s candidate has performed especially poorly, being mocked by Algerian social media pages for suggesting inviting American troops to deal with Islamic insurgents in the region.

So far, the front runners in the race are Azzedine Mihoubi for the National Rally for Democracy (RND), who has picked up most of the remaining supporters for institutional candidates, and Guermit Bounouira who has converted a large number of Hirak supporters. Despite the movement’s commitment to boycotting votes, his credentials as an ally of activist movements and time spent in prison have won over a significant portion of Hirak. However the gap between these two candidates is still rather small, meaning it’s anyone’s race.