By Abbas Mimouni
ALGIERS (AA) - Algeria's incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune won his second five-year presidential term in early elections held on Saturday, the country's electoral authority announced on Sunday.
During a press conference, Mohamed Charfi, the head of the Independent National Authority of Elections (ANIE), announced that Tebboune won with 94.65% of the votes.
He added that candidate Abdelali Hassani Cherif, leader of the Movement for Society and Peace (the largest Islamic party), came in second with 3.17% of votes.
Youcef Aouchiche, the first national secretary of the Socialist Forces Front (the oldest opposition/leftist party), came in third and last with 2.16% of votes.
Charfi reported that the votes cast for the three candidates totaled 5.7 million out of more than 24 million registered voters.
The electoral authority is expected to immediately forward the counting records to the Constitutional Court, which will have up to 48 hours to review any potential appeals, with the final results to be announced within 10 days.
Earlier on Sunday, Charfi stated that the voter turnout at the closing of the polling stations at 8 p.m. on Saturday (1900GMT) within Algeria was 48.03%.
This figure surpassed the last voter turnout for the presidential elections in 2019, which was 39.88%.
This is the second presidential election conducted under the complete supervision of an independent electoral authority since the 2019 election, whereas previously, elections were supervised by the Ministry of Interior.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala