Algeria held legislative elections on Thursday 2 July, asking more than 24.7 million registered voters to choose the 407 members of the People's National Assembly (APN), the lower house of parliament, for a five-year term. The vote is widely regarded as a test of public engagement more than seven years after the Hirak, the mass protest movement that in 2019 swept longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power after two decades in office. Turnout is expected to be historically low, and the central question of the day is not who wins but how many Algerians bother to show up at all.

The shadow of the Hirak looms large over the poll. Many Algerians who took to the streets in 2019 hoped the uprising would usher in a new generation of political leaders, but familiar faces and the same established parties dominate the electoral lists once again. Opposition groups have dismissed the contest as hollow, pointing to the rejection of roughly one third of all candidates by the Independent National Authority of Elections (ANIE), which they say lacked valid legal justification. Independent candidates from civil society and academia represent the most visible novelty this cycle, yet they are largely shut out of public media and face questions about what room they would have to manoeuvre if elected. In the outgoing assembly, smaller parties holding seats alongside the three dominant pro-government blocs have been repeatedly marginalised by entrenched bureaucratic structures.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has framed the election as a pillar of building a