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ALGIERS — Radical Islamist groups who had been calling for a boycott of Algeria's parliamentary elections appeared to be succeeding as today's voting neared an end, with scant turnout reported at polling stations around the country.
Elections in Algeria have been tense since 1991, when the army cancelled voting and seized power when it became clear that the Islamists were about to win a sweeping majority, sparking an internecine war that left as many as 200,000 people dead.
Today's voting comes in the midst of a violent al-Qaeda bombing campaign aimed at disrupting the elections. Two bombs exploded in the eastern city of Constantine yesterday, killing one policeman, while a triple-suicide bombing in Algiers last month left 33 people dead.
Security was extremely high as voting began, with the al-Watan newspaper reporting that some 15,000 police had been deployed around the country. Groups of blue-uniformed policemen armed with Kalashnikov rifles stood guard at each polling station. Others directed traffic and scrutinized cars at nearly every intersection. Large vehicles were banned from the capital city's streets for the 12-hour voting period.
A policewoman checks the ID of voters at a polling station during parliamentary elections in Algiers on Thursday. (Reuters)
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Despite a warm and sunny day, only a trickle of voters visited a polling station set up at the Fatima Ghazali school near the centre of Algiers. Crowds of people walked by the school without entering, complaining that it was predetermined that parties tied to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika would win the vote, and that little would be done by the next parliament to fix the country's spiralling unemployment problem.
“We have voted many times before and nothing changed,” said Ali Ben Belkassem, a 41-year-old father of four dressed who was in traditional Islamic robes. “Elections don't interest me anymore.”
Even some of those who did cast their ballots did so with little enthusiasm for the process. “I just marked the first name on the ballot and put it in,” laughed Djouzi Yamina, an 80-year great-grandmother who said she lives in a dilapidated slum house in the city's historic kasbah. “I don't even know who I voted for, but I hope they get us better housing.”
With the voting day half over, Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said that only 19 per cent of the country's 18.8 million eligible voters had cast their ballots. If the pattern holds, that will be well below previous elections, and drastically short of the 85 per cent turnout forecast by senior figures in the ruling National Liberation Front.
The FLN (the party is known locally by its French acronym) currently controls 199 of 389 seats in the legislature, and is expected to match or increase that total when results are announced tomorrow.
The party, which has close ties to the country's military, has dominated Algerian politics since the 1950s, when it led the country's struggle for independence from France.
The semi-authoritarian Mr. Bouteflika also has the support of two other significant parliamentary groups, the National Democratic Rally, a nationalist grouping, and the Movement for Society and Peace, a moderate Islamist party.
The Islamic Salvation Front, the fundamentalist party that won the first round of the 1991 vote, prompting the army's intervention, remains banned in Algeria
