Algeria ruling FLN wins most seats in parliament amid record-low turnout
Algeria's ruling National Liberation Front has won the most seats in the country's parliamentary elections, according to the election board, but the result was overshadowed by historically low participation. The vote took place on July 2 and returned the FLN with 90 of the 407 seats in parliament. Officials said turnout was about 21 percent among the country's 25 million eligible voters.
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The National Independent Elections Authority, known as ANIE, said the election was transparent, with its interim head Karim Khelfane describing the abstention rate as not specific to Algeria. The result was announced on Monday, several days after the vote. The authorities also said roughly a third of prospective candidates were barred from running, a decision that became one of the main points of controversy around the poll.
The low turnout gives the result added political significance because it points to continuing public disengagement from formal politics. It also follows a pattern seen in the previous parliamentary election in 2021, when turnout was then a historic low of 23 percent. That election came after the 2019 Hirak protest movement, which forced the resignation of long-serving president Abdelaziz Bouteflika and reshaped Algeria's political landscape.
The latest vote comes under President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who was elected in December 2019 and won a second term in 2024. The background to the election includes the suspension of Hirak protests in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic and a broader period of tighter pressure on activists, political opponents, journalists and bloggers. Against that backdrop, the parliamentary result is being read less as a strong mandate than as a measure of the gap between state institutions and much of the electorate.
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The FLN remains one of Algeria's dominant political forces and has long been associated with the post-independence state. Even so, the scale of abstention and the disqualification of many would-be candidates raise questions about the competitiveness of the process. The election board's defence of the vote suggests officials are seeking to frame the result as procedurally sound despite the low participation.
What remains unclear is whether the turnout and candidate exclusions will lead to any political response from opposition figures or civil society actors. It is also not yet clear whether the result will alter the balance of power inside parliament in any meaningful way. For now, the main issue is the legitimacy challenge posed by the low level of participation and the continuing public apathy around elections.
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