ALGIERS, 1 October 2005 — Algerians overwhelmingly approved a peace plan that provides a broad amnesty for extremists, despite critics’ charges that it whitewashes past crimes, official referendum results showed yesterday.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation got more than 97 percent of Thursday’s vote — a giant win that could further strengthen President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The “no” polled less than 3 percent.
Nearly 80 percent of the more than 18 million eligible voters cast ballots, the minister said. In Khenchla, an eastern town 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Algeria’s border with Tunisia, 99.95 percent voted, the minister said. But the turnout rate was far lower — just over 11 percent — in the main towns of Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia in Kabylie, a restive Berber region east of the capital Algiers where there had been calls to boycott the vote.
The interior minister said the results “reflect Algerians’ desire to live in peace and to turn the page of the tragedy that our country has lived through for 15 years.”
He brushed aside reporters’ questions about the high participation rate, particularly the nearly 72 percent in Algiers, where turnout is traditionally not much more than 40 percent. The voting and vote-counting were “transparent,” he told a news conference. Newspapers acclaimed the “yes” victory even before it was announced. “Algerians Say YES,” the government-backed daily El Moudjahid headlined.
Critics of Bouteflika’s charter, from opposition politicians to human rights groups and families of people who disappeared in Algeria’s bloody insurgency, had predicted it would easily pass, especially given the lack of real debate. The popular Bouteflika also won a landslide re-election victory in 2004, five years after taking office following an election tarnished by allegations of fraud.
The president said the plan will help close the wounds from the deadly violence and atrocities that gripped the North African nation for more than a decade, leaving an estimated 150,000 dead.
