Portraiture and the 2019 Algerian Presidential Elections

The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is poised to hold another presidential election tomorrow, December 12, 2019. The election will take place in spite of Algerians’ months-long protests against a perceived paucity of qualified candidates or, in other words, candidates not closely affiliated with the previous regime of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and who will seriously fight corruption and the military’s encroachment into politics. The elections will be held despite the threat of mass voter boycotts and even some political parties and local political figures abstaining from taking part, as Dalia Ghanem reports. One wonders if the election will give a mandate of any substance to the winner, and if the military, especially Army Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaed Salah, will indeed relinquish power.

While the circumstances surrounding the elections are not ideal for Algeria’s stability, it does not mean that candidates have not gone through the motions of trying to attract voters, including Algerians in the diaspora, such as Paris. According to the 2016 Algerian Constitution, the candidate with the popular vote will win the election (Article 85), and diaspora Algerians may very well help tip the balance in favor of one candidate over another.  

As I analyze the build-up to the election, I have been fascinated by imagery that is put into the service of convincing voters to choose a specific candidate, including how that imagery aligns with current constitutional or election law. For me, how the election plays out in cyberspace is an especially interesting way to see how the tech savvy and tech endowed or, in other words, the relatively elite voters in the metropole and abroad are fed information meant to encourage them to not only legitimize the election but to also to choose a specific candidate. 

According to Article 123 of the 2016 Constitution, among others, organic law organizes the electoral system. In the Algerian Official Journal online database, there are at least 174 legal texts stretching back to 1979 that refer to the presidential election process or specific elections. Recently, the format of the ballot papers is regulated by the Ministry of Interior’s Executive Decree (Décret exécutif) number 19-54 of January 30, 2019. In it, its writers stipulate in Article 2 that against white or blue backgrounds voters should see when they are at the polls the full name of the candidate in Arabic or Latin letters along with a photograph of the candidate.

Before then, voters are at least ideally prepared by that which is described in Décret exécutif n° 14-25 of February 1, 2014. This law regulates candidates’ publicity for their candidacies. Reading the ten articles one learns that the candidates bear the costs of advertising their candidacies, and they are allowed to post displays in the physical pubic sphere in the Jürgen Habermas -ian understanding of this term, among other manners of advertising. However the virtual world or the Internet were not mentioned specifically in the legislation I saw online. Specific imagery was also not regulated, at least not after January 1999, so not recently.

The lack of regulation is especially surprising, I think, for at least two reasons One is because Algerians in the diaspora were given the vote the same date as the Décret exécutif n° 14-25: February 1, 2014 (in Décret exécutif n° 14-24). Diaspora voters were also acknowledged in 2004 legislation. It is also surprising given the format of the ballot materials. One would expect candidates to be required to use one particular portrait of themselves, like those that will be seen on the 2019 ballots, to assist persons who may not read Arabic or Latin letters well. Algerian Literacy Association spokesperson Aicha Barki reported fourteen percent illiteracy rate in 2014, down from figures the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics reported for 2008.

So how is the Internet being used to attract voters who are comparatively better educated and wealthy, and likely mostly urban voters in Algeria and abroad? How are portraits presumably similar to those one may find on the ballots used to advertise?

There is much that has been written about photography and portraiture. In the Introduction to his 2018 book, Portraiture and Critical Reflections on Being, Euripides Altintzogou enumerates the factors one should consider when analyzing a portrait’s meaning. They include the historical conditions under which a portrait is produced, the “representational intentions and social identities of the artist" and his/her subject, in addition to the style or "conventions of the portrait," and the “context of its reception.” Searching for hidden symbolism is especially important.

One case study for the 2019 Algerian presidential election is provided by the former Minister of Culture. The 2019 Algerian presidential candidates include former prime ministers Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Ali Benflis, former culture minister Azzedddine Mihoubi, former tourism minister Abdelkader Bengrine, and Abdelaziz Belaid, head of the El Mostakbal Movement party. At Mihoubi’s Facebook website, we see the candidate with a slight smile and cock of his head looking us directly in the eye as he wears a dark navy colored suit over a dark blue with burgundy or red mark covered tie and a white shirt. His arms are crossed. Surrounding him in Arabic writing is his name and in Arabic, French, and Amazigh or Berber Tifinagh writing, a slogan: “I commit myself.” Beneath that is his presidential candidacy website proper, though the listed address is not a hotlink, in addition to symbols indicating you can find him on Twitter and Instagram, #mihoubi_president. In a quick scan of other images at his website, one sees that he is almost always shown smiling, sometimes with his eye wrinkles or crow’s feet that show is age. The reference to Algeria's Berber citizens or Kabyle People is especially poignant considering their minority status in Algeria.

In another candidate’s Facebook page, Abdelaziz Belaid’s, there is less English, if any, and we see him in two types of portraits. In the first, he is smiling, looking at us directly as his dark suit jacket dressed body is turned slightly. Wearing a similar suit in the second portrait, we see him staring off to the side and not making eye contact with the viewer. Other images at the Facebook site show him without his suit jacket. His slogan in Arabic and Amazigh is “The people decide.” In some photographs he is shown with what appears to be farmers and a crop.

In candidate Abdelkader Bengrine’s Facebook page, which relies upon Arabic primarily to express his messages, the candidate again wears a dark suit with a dark tie and white collared shirt. He faces us directly and in a close-up image that includes little more than his face, neck, and upper chest. In other photographs under this portrait he looks us directly in the eye with a slight smile, while in others he pumps his fist or laughs with young men, one conspicuously bearded. In one photograph, he wears a black turtleneck top under his suit jacket. In Arabic next to him and upraised right hand is the phrase “son of the people.” In his portrait, like the other seemingly candid photographs, viewers clearly see his face not retouched, it appears, his age clearly apparent. Ghanem writes this is the candidate who encourages Algerian women to marry or write about them getting married, perhaps to attract young men to vote for him, one could surmise.

These are just a few examples of portrait photographs posted on social media websites. Each feature the upper half of the subjects portrayed in varying degrees, much like busts from Antiquity, with only one including his arms and hands in his portrait. Each appears to capitalize on the candidate’s age and, one assumes, the implied wisdom and experience, which make the ideal candidate. The candidates pointedly choose photography instead of the quasi Sheppard-Fairey-renders-Barack- Obama-esque woodblock print style of portraiture employed by Tunisian candidate Nabil Karoui, who lost the election. In their images, the Algerian candidates' smiles and faces that look at the viewer directly can be argued to symbolize that the candidate is approachable, honest, and authentic, seemingly in the same space as the viewer given the realism inherent in the photograph as an artistic practice and material object. The not idealized faces perhaps best connote the candidates’ (desired image of) authenticity, and, thus, their supposed “truth selves,” which are also reflected in other images of the carefully staged and curated Facebook websites.

Of course, how the images and candidates’ websites are ultimately accessed and received can and should be explored. One assumes one can ferret out the fake accounts by finding the ones with established histories. While some reactions are positive, others are quite biting. A longer analysis of reaction is warranted.