Algeria: Abdelmadjid Tebboune wins presidential election

Algeria’s former Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune had won Thursday’s presidential election. He secured 58% of the vote, enough to forego a second round, the electoral body said.
The final voter turnout was 40%, the electoral body’s head said in a televised news conference in Algiers.

Tebboune, who served as housing minister under Bouteflika and briefly as premier before falling out with tycoons in the ex-leader’s entourage, was announced on Friday as the winner of more than half the vote, making a second round unnecessary.

Tebboune was Minister-Delegate for Local Government from 1991 to 1992. Later, under President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, he served as Minister of Communication and Culture from 1999 to 2000 and then as Minister-Delegate for Local Government from 2000 to 2001.

He was Minister of Housing and Urban Planning from 2001 to 2002. Ten years later, in 2012, he returned to the post of Minister of Housing in the government of Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal.

The other presidential candidates were ex-prime minister Ali Benflis, ex-culture minister Azzedddine Mihoubi, former tourism minister Abdelkader Bengrine, and Abdelaziz Belaid, a former member of the ruling FLN party’s central committee.

All are familiar faces that have held power since the country won independence from France in 1962.