ALGIERS, 18 May 2007 — Algeria went to the polls yesterday to elect a new Parliament amid heightened security fears of a resurgence of extremism and a boycott call from the North African wing of Al-Qaeda.
Nearly 18.8 million Algerians were registered to cast ballots at more than 42,000 polling stations for the 389-seat National People’s Assembly, with 28 parties and 12,229 candidates in the running.
The day after two homemade bombs killed a police officer and injured five other people — after Al-Qaeda had on Monday called on Algerians to boycott the poll — no incident had been reported by evening.
Turnout stood at 28.39 percent at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT), two hours before all polling stations closed, compared with 38.18 percent at the same hour in the 2002 election, the Interior Ministry said.
Total turnout in 2002 was 46.17 percent. “There’s only old folks voting,” grumbled a poll observer from Algeria’s dominant political party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), in the Bab El-Oued district of Algiers. “It’s a war veterans’ vote.”
“This is in order to get an apartment,” said a veiled Amina Abdoune, 24, who lives in a one-room flat with her parents and siblings. She cast her ballot at a school, hopeful that the government will ease an acute housing shortage.
The national electoral oversight commission said it had written to the head of state to cite a number of instances of alleged fraud, asking him to “intervene to end serious abuses (which) exceed the bounds of isolated cases.”
Earlier , President Abdelaziz Bouteflika voted at a school in the verdant hills high above Algiers, accompanied by a bewildered-looking young nephew, bodyguards in dark glasses and live television news cameras.
First results are due early this morning, and the outcome was not expected to significantly change the political landscape in Algeria, with allies of the 70-year-old president expected to retain a majority of seats.
The voting was nevertheless being closely monitored by the United States and Europe, which regard oil- and gas-rich Algeria as a strategic partner in the broad fight against extremism.
On the eve of the vote, a police officer was killed and five other people were injured by two homemade bombs in Algeria’s third-biggest city Constantine.
It was the most serious incident in an Algerian city since triple suicide bombings on April 11 in the capital Algiers, claimed by Al-Qaeda, took 30 lives and left 220 injured.
Interior Minister Yazid Zaerhouni condemned Wednesday’s blasts as “an act of sabotage against the Algerian democratic system,” and urged Algerians to go to the polls in big numbers “to show their attachment to democracy.”
