Algeria’s upcoming election will not instigate meaningful change

No matter who forms the next government, the military will remain in control and popular protests will continue.

On June 12, a snap election will be held in Algeria to elect 407 members to the People’s General Assembly, the lower house of the country’s parliament. The vote was initially scheduled to take place in 2022, but President Abdelmadjid Tabboune moved the election date forward in response to ongoing anti-government protests in the country. A protest movement, known as Hirak, emerged in Algeria in 2019 in response to the announcement of then-President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s candidacy for a fifth presidential mandate. Weekly mass protests led Bouteflika, who had been in power since 1999, to step down in April 2019. Bouteflika’s departure from the political scene, however, did not mark the end of this grassroots movement. Protesters continued to regularly take to the streets, this time demanding a complete overhaul of the political system, which – notably – would involve the distancing from the political sphere of the country’s all-powerful military. The Hirak movement’s protests largely came to a halt in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the protests returned with full force in February 2021, after the country managed to bring the outbreak under relative control.