Algeria: world’s 3rd largest economy, latest blunder by president Tebboune

Lacking tangible achievements to use in his electoral campaign, President Tebboune uses imagination, telling a crowd of his supporters that Algeria has become the third largest economy in the world.

The statement was met with euphoria by a crowd that has been brainwashed by a military regime using the media, education, co-option and mostly oppression.

The electoral campaign takes place amidst political indifference among Algerians, leading many observers to forecast a large boycott of the sham election.

Tebboune’s claim of Algeria being the third economy in the world is a means to console a disenchanted domestic audience following a series of international debacles, the most painful of which was the failure to join the BRICS, which admitted Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabic as new members.

Tebboune announced early elections while staying in power without offering a plausible reason. Meanwhile, the crackdown on the opposition and the media left the political landscape empty for a one-man show by Tebboune, the civilian façade of a military junta that has renewed itself following the pro-democracy Hirak movement that forced ailing President Bouteflika to give up a fifth term.

The main themes of Tebboune’s electoral campaign revolve around conspiracy theories. The argument he puts forward is that Algerians should vote for him because the country risks foreign conspiracies.

He also surfs on populism by promising to send the Algerian army to Gaza. Meanwhile, Algeria has banned all pro-Palestinian marches for fear that such protests may turn out to demonstrations against the military regime.

Morocco was also a salient theme in Tebboune’s electoral campaign which rehashed the same warmongering messages in support of the Algerian Polisario proxies who pursue a separatist chimera in the Sahara territory.

As Tebboune continues to brag about projects launched by his predecessor, such as stadiums and the corruption-marred east-west highway, he spoke as if he was a new candidate delivering empty promises, instead of rendering accounts on his failed term at the economic, social, and diplomatic levels.

Under Tebboune, Algerian youths are increasingly risking their lives in the hazardous Mediterranean crossing to flee unemployment, double-digit inflation, and ques for basic goods.

With near zero turnout in the breakaway Kabylie region in the 2019 presidential vote, the regime of Tebboune is using fear in its electoral campaign, announcing the seizure of weapons stocked by the Kabyle independence movement MAK, an accusation that was rejected by the France-based MAK leadership.