Algerians approved a revised version of the country's constitution with two thirds of votes cast, the electoral commission said Monday, despite record low turnout.
The revised constitution passed with 66.8 per cent of the vote, National Independent Elections Authority (ANIE) chief Mohamed Charfi told a press conference. But he had earlier announced turnout of just 23.7 percent, a historic low for a major poll.
Fewer than one in four Algerian voters took part in Sunday’s
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and the powerful military had presented the new constitution as a sign that they had addressed the causes of public anger that prompted mass weekly protests for more than a year.
But Sunday’s turnout showed lacklustre backing for a vote that many members of the Hirak street protest movement had decried as a sham intended to quash their movement.
The global pandemic may have also constrained voting, with Algeria recording more than 300 new cases on Saturday.
“There is no point in voting. This constitution will not change anything,” said bus driver Hassan Rabia, 30, sitting with two friends at a cafe in central Algiers.
Days before the vote, Mr Tebboune was admitted to a hospital in Germany after saying aides had tested positive for Covid-19 and a cartoon in newspaper El Watan showed a man in a polling booth looking at ballots marked in German rather than Arabic.
Though pro-government media had shown a crowd of young men in one city rushing into a polling station as soon as it opened, voting queues in the capital Algiers were small.
In the Kabylie region, a bastion of support for the Hirak street protest movement and centre of a 1990s Islamist insurgency, demonstrators blocked polling stations, witnesses said.
“It is ‘ulac’ vote here,” said Said Mezouane in the village of Haizer, using the Berber word for ‘no’.
Mr Tebboune has presented the changes as partly addressing the wishes of protesters who forced his predecessor Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down after 20 years in office.
But their demands – replacing the ruling elite, the military’s withdrawal from politics and an end to corruption – have at best beenonly partly met.
Many of Mr Bouteflika’s closest allies and other top officials, including his brother Said and the former intelligence chief Mohamed Mediene, as well as major business tycoons, have been jailed on corruption charges.
The new constitution includes presidential term limits and more powers for the parliament and judiciary.
But the military remains the most powerful institution in Algerian politics, though it has played a less prominent role since Tebboune’s election.
The new constitution gives it powers to intervene outside Algeria’s borders, with the generals concerned about insecurity in neighbouring Libya and Mali.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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