President Abdelhamid Tebboune told his supporters at a well-choreographed election campaign rally in Oran that Algeria is the world’s third largest economy

Having cleared the field of any meaningful opposition and muzzled the media, the campaign — which is being held amidst unprecedented domestic and overseas political indifference — has become an embarrassing one man show. The only question Tebboune has left unanswered is whether he is: a liar; prone to perpetual slips of the tongue; delusional; deliberately deceptive; or, as many on social media are sarcastically asking, that the 79-year-old president is mentally incapacitated. 

How else can one explain this latest claim which the silenced media fails to mention and his team fails to correct. His online supporters have defended Tebboune’s statement as a ‘slip of the tongue’, and that he meant to say that Algeria was Africa’s third largest economy. That is almost true if one accepts that its GDP has also been recalibrated following a sleight of hand by including a large proportion of the informal economy into the calculation (Algeria Politics & Security – 02.04.24; 28.05.24; 04.06.24 and 16.07.24). According to the original GDP figures Algeria is Africa’s fourth largest economy after South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria. The latest IMF data ranks Algeria as the world’s 50^th largest on the basis of its recalibrated GDP and around 56^th on its original and more accurate calibration. 

Even if it was a ‘slip of the tongue’ they seem to occur almost every time Tebboune makes public addresses which have become a litany of absurd statistics and embarrassing statements. They include: ‘Putin, friend of humanity;’ stratospheric quantities of drinking water from desalination plants about to be built; saying that the army would go to Gaza and build three hospitals in 20 days; and his promise to build a 200 kms long railway line from Algiers to Tamanrasset. He has made countless false assertions: is it credible that, by 2026, the country will no longer have to import durum wheat; or that it will build two million homes? 

The president’s speech-writers clearly believe that: such ‘slips of the tongue’ can be ignored by a muzzled media; and that his supporters, denied access to any independent means of fact-checking, will swallow the duplicitous figures, exaggerations and lies.

With only four days left until the 7 September election, Tebboune’s carefully managed campaign — marred by widespread indifference and two virtually muted opponents — is drifting to an end. The relatively few overseas-based independent Algerian journalists describe the campaign as: ‘all smoke and mirrors’; ‘revolving around conspiracy theories’; ‘surfing on populism’ and ‘bragging about projects launched by his predecessor.’