Algerian Assembly election, 1948

Elections for a new Assembly were held in French colonial Algeria on 4 and 11 April 1948. The new 120-seat Assembly was to be elected by two colleges, each of which would vote for 60 seats; one college represented around 1,500,000 Europeans and Algerian Jews, plus a few thousands "évolués" Muslims, and the second of around 8,000,000 "indigenous" Muslims. Following the victory of the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (MTLD) in the 1947 local elections, and with the MTLD and fellow nationalist UDMA set to win a majority in the Second College in the second round of voting, the authorities openly rigged the results in more than two-thirds of seats to ensure the victory of pro-government independents. the Assembly elections were manipulated by the authorities to ensure a favourable result. The rigging was so brazen that the phrase "élection algérienne" became synonymous with rigged elections.

Marcel-Edmond Naegelen, a leading member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and Minister of Educatiojn in the French government, had been appointed by the government as Governor-General of Algeria on 11 February 1948. Naegelen was the son of an Alsatian who had chosen to move to France after Germany's annexation of Alsace in 1870, and he was strongly against the Alsatian autonomists ("separatists"), he developed the same hostility towards the Algerian "separatists".

Together with the French authorities, he organised the rigging of the elections and the sabotage of the new (1947) status of Algeria, strongly opposed by the allies of the SFIO in the French government coalition, who threatened to withdraw their support. Among them was the leader of the "French Algeria" lobby, the deputy of Constantine René Mayer.

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