ALGIERS, 8 April 2004 — On the eve of what is shaping up as the most democratic presidential election ever to be held in Algeria, the press and most of the candidates in the polls yesterday accused the incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika of plotting to steal the vote.
The tabloid press, quoting “very reliable sources,” described a Machiavellian series of events in which state television would first announce phony results today evening, followed by the staging of massive street celebrations and a bloody crackdown on the expected backlash.
“Without the ballots, a putsch!” screamed the front page of the daily Le Soir.
Bouteflika’s five challengers for the presidency, as well as the European Parliament’s observer mission, agree that a first-round victory by Bouteflika, given the apparent distribution of support among the six candidates, would raise suspicions.
A joint communiqué issued Tuesday by the president’s three main rivals — his former right-hand man Ali Benflis, Islamic candidate Abdallah Djaballah and Said Sadi, a secularist — alleged a “plot” was being hatched in which Bouteflika’s camp would claim victory with 53 to 55 percent of the vote before all the ballots were counted.
The campaign team of Algeria’s first woman to run for president, far-left candidate Louisa Hanoune, put out a separate statement saying “it cannot be ruled out that fraud may tarnish the credibility of this election.”
Nationalist Ali Fawzi Rebaine put his name to a statement by all five of Bouteflika’s rivals alleging that “the first signs of plans for fraud” were already visible.
The swirling charges as the clock ticks down to Thursday’s polls are reminiscent of the atmosphere ahead of the 1999 election that brought Bouteflika to power. Then, all six of his rivals — who included Djaballah — pulled out the day before, claiming that vote-rigging was already in full swing.
The private newspaper Liberte said Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni would be coerced into playing the role of “big orchestrator of the electoral hold-up.”
Ahmed Fattani, publisher of the daily L’Expression, said a first-round win by Bouteflika was likely, given his popularity and his efforts to end the traumatizing civil war in the north African country.
In 1992,the army cancelled the second round of a legislative election the Islamists were poised to win. Some 150,000 people have died in the war since then.
Bouteflika “has done things that aren’t bad. He could do better, but in terms of security, now you can go out at night. There was a time when there were 500 people killed a day,” Fattani said.
While the president deserves to be re-elected in the first round, if he has to face an unprecedented run-off vote two weeks from now, “then we’ll be in a real democracy,” Fattani said. He compared the two scenarios to the difference between black and white and color television. “Which would you want?” he asked.
Fattani’s L’Expression yesterday ran an exclusive interview with Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, a respected former foreign minister who was one of the six candidates who withdrew in 1999. “Everything depends on the conditions on the day of the vote,” Ibrahimi said. “In my opinion, if there is no fraud, a second round is inevitable.”
For the first time since independence more than four decades ago, many Algerians sense that their vote can make a real difference this time, after assuming on past occasions — even in the multi-party elections allowed since 1990 — that the all-powerful military had pre-selected the winner.
What makes this election especially unpredictable is that Benflis, like Bouteflika a product of the military-backed establishment, is the president’s top challenger.
Encouraged by liberalization of the electoral law, a declaration of neutrality by the military and the presence of international observers, the candidates have mounted spirited campaigns described as “American-style” in the press.
“The fact that the candidates are still there means that in the minds of the candidates, the elections are still worth contesting,” Pasqualina Neapoletano, head of the European Parliament observer team told reporters on Tuesday.
She said that if one candidate wins in a landslide, or just over 50 percent, “that will mean that something’s wrong. We’re not stupid.”
