ALGIERS, 6 April 2004 — Candidates in Algeria’s presidential election had one last day yesterday to woo voters as campaigning was set to end in an election that pits the incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika against five challengers including his erstwhile ally, Ali Benflis.
Both are given good chances of victory in the North African country’s third multiparty presidential polls since independence more than 40 years ago, and voters are harboring hopes that new rules will help prevent the rampant irregularities that marred past elections.
Bouteflika and Benflis, the head of government he sacked last May but who remains secretary-general of the long-ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), were set to hold their final campaign rallies at the same time in the afternoon at venues in the capital Algiers.
The mood was upbeat early yesterday at a Bouteflika campaign office here where his supporters said the president’s experience would carry the day on Thursday, and that their candidate would win comfortably in the first round.
“We know he’s a guy who works,” volunteer Chefai Hossain, 34 and unemployed, told AFP. “I trust the president.” Another volunteer, Aissa Malika, said she had known Bouteflika since 1988. “He’s one of us.”
Bouteflika, 67, has argued that he wants to finish the job of ending the civil war that began in 1992 and has claimed some 150,000 lives, after having presided over the surrender of thousands of Islamist rebels and a steep decrease in the fighting.
At a nearby Benflis campaign office, the party volunteers were pinning their hopes on a desire for change in the country of 32 million, where half the work force under 30 years of age is unemployed, housing is scarce and one in two people live below the poverty threshold.
Mourad Dahmani, a 25-year-old student, said he was attracted by Benflis’ pledges to help Algerian youths.
Benflis has accused the president of having dictatorial leanings and branded Bouteflika a has-been who is incapable of facing the demands of modernity.
Other challengers include Said Sadi, leader of the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy, whose support base is in the troubled northeastern Kabylie region, the home of Algeria’s sizable Berber minority community.
It was in Kabylie that the election campaign saw its worst violent incident last Wednesday, when police and protesters clashed outside a Bouteflika campaign rally in Tizi Ouzou, the region’s main city.
Islamist candidate Abdallah Djaballah has lashed out against “Westernization” and “moral decadence”, while at the other end of the spectrum is Trotskyite Louisa Hanoune, spokeswoman of the Workers’ Party and the first woman to stand for president, not only in Algeria but anywhere in the entire Arab world.
The sixth candidate is Ali Fawzi Rebaine, leader of a small nationalist party, Ahd 54. The campaign has been remarkably open for an electorate used to having the all-powerful military pull the strings, and Thursday’s choice is in stark contrast to the election that brought Bouteflika to power in 1999.
Although that was also a multiparty vote, the choice was abruptly reduced to Bouteflika alone after his six opponents pulled out on the eve of polling, alleging that massive fraud was in the works.
This time, the election is shaping up as a Western-style duel between Bouteflika and his 59-year-old former right-hand man. The pair’s falling-out last year created a rift in the FLN, which nominated Benflis as its candidate, leaving Bouteflika to declare an independent bid.
The military has declared its neutrality - which has widely been seen as genuine - and for the first time, some 120 international observers will monitor the vote.
In addition, changes to the electoral law enacted early this year will allow parties to deploy monitors at some 40,000 polling stations, in what the head of the electoral watchdog body said would be a “giant step for democracy” in Algeria.
If no candidate garners more than half the vote on Thursday, a second round will be held two weeks later.
