ALGIERS, 9 April 2004 — The first round of Algeria’s presidential elections yesterday was marked by scattered riots, as incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika tried to win an unprecedented second term.
Renewed clashes between youths and police broke out in the western region of Kabylie, notably in the cities of Sahadj, El-Asnam and El-Adjiba.
In addition, a small group of rioters wrecked ballot boxes in the city of Rafour while police fought demonstrators, who set up barricades and burned tires in the city center.
Several people were reported injured in the city of Akbou, about 150 kilometers west of the capital Algiers, as protestors hurled Molotov cocktails and stones and police responded with tear gas.
Residents of Kabylie, a predominantly Berber region, are demanding greater autonomy from the central government and have called for a boycott of the vote.
Just after midday, there were signs that the boycott call may be having an effect as voter participation was lower than five years ago. The Interior Ministry announced that as of 1 p.m. (1200 GMT) 33.35 percent of the more than 18 million registered voters had cast their ballots, compared to 36.41 percent at the same time in 1999.
Turnout averaged some 46 percent after eight hours of polling, but in restive Kabylie it was only about 14 percent, the Interior Ministry announced. Many voters heeded a boycott call by part of the region’s traditional leadership in Tizi-Ouzou, but turnout was slightly higher in Kabylie’s second city Bejaia and other towns in the region.
Bouteflika ran unopposed in 1999 because his six opponents all dropped out after claiming that the Algerian army had fixed the vote. He then received 73.8 percent of the vote, with the rest of the ballots cast for the “non-candidates”.
This year, he is facing a strong challenge from his former prime minister and adviser, Ali Benflis. Benflis and two other opponents, Said Sadi and Abdellah Djaballah, warned late Tuesday that what they called “the president’s clan” may be working to cheat and announce a Bouteflika victory “with 53 to 55 percent of the vote” in the first round.
The duel between Bouteflika and Benflis, the government chief he sacked last year in an acrimonious falling-out, has also lent suspense to the vote, the third presidential poll since the end of single-party rule in 1989.
The Bouteflika-Benflis split has divided the longtime ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), forcing the president to stand as an independent with Benflis bearing the FLN standard. Bouteflika’s other challengers are Louisa Hanoune, a Trotskyite who is Algeria’s first woman presidential candidate, Djaballah and Ali Fawzi Rebaine, head of a small nationalist party.
Western diplomats expected the poll in the vast, oil and gas-rich North African country to be the freest since its independence from France in 1962 and underline its return to the international fold under Bouteflika.
The military, which has a history of handpicking the winners of previous elections, has this time made an unprecedented declaration of neutrality. Opposition candidates nevertheless alleged fraud.
Bouteflika, 67, was the favorite in a field of six candidates. During his tenure, he has all but ended a bloody guerrilla war, much of it directed against civilians, that flared after the military prevented a hard-line Islamic party from gaining power at the ballot box 12 years ago.
Benflis has offered no evidence of his allegation, along with two other candidates, that fraud was being prepared. After voting, he told reporters: “If fraud ... and this electoral hold-up are rejected by the electorate, then I think people will choose change and the proposals I have put forward.”
The head of the election monitoring body, Said Bouchair, said the vote was “proceeding in good conditions”, the official APS news agency said.
Many ordinary voters were ready to give Bouteflika credit for a gradual emergence from a decade of violence in which the government says at least 100,000 people were killed, and human rights groups say 150,000. Bouteflika’s offer of amnesty persuaded 6,000 rebels to lay down their arms.
“I voted for Bouteflika because Algeria still needs him,” said Abdelkader Barane, 33 and unemployed. “I see in him national unity and reconciliation among all Algerians,” he said in Tizi-Ouzou, capital of Kabylie.
And the army’s pledge of neutrality this time is an unprecedented statement of its confidence in the country’s ability to combine democracy with stability.
Apart from Bouteflika and Ahmed Ben Bella, the first head of state in the early 1960s, all Algeria’s presidents have been former generals.
