ALGERIA: Algiers slum residents fear the Presidential elections won't change anything for the poor

Record ID: 573650

  • Title: ALGERIA: Algiers slum residents fear the Presidential elections won't change anything for the poor
  • Date: 9th April 2009
  • Summary: SLUMS
  • Embargoed: 24th April 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Algeria
  • Country: Algeria
  • Topics: Domestic Politics,Social Services / Welfare
  • Reuters ID: LVACL8EXN5DGKY7MATJU8FYCRTUP
  • Story Text: With many of Algeria's voters despondent about the one-horse race in the presidential elections and some members of the poorer levels of society unable to vote, Algeria could be facing a low turnout in Thursday's polls.
    Algeria is Africa's second largest country but most of it is desert and nearly all its 34 million people live in the fertile north.
    The oil and gas producing country is a member of OPEC, but there are many members of its society who don't see much of the country's riches, such as the residents of the Ben Messous slums on the outskirts of Algiers.
    Some of the area's residents are hoping that this week's presidential elections might bring change, while others are pessimistic, saying they don't even have the right to vote.
    "I don't have the right to vote," said 24-year old Abderazak, "we have been living here twenty years and still don't have residency papers, so how am I supposed to vote," he asked as he walked through the mounds of rubbish which surround the slum houses.
    The Algerian elections are widely been seen as a one-horse race that will ensure President Abdelaziz Bouteflika a third term. Well-known opposition figures are boycotting the April 9 polls and a lack of weighty challengers has raised the prospect of a low turnout that may underscore popular apathy towards formal politics.

    "What I want is that they give me a place to live and that my children can find some work, that they help us and serve the country, that is what I want," a fifty-year-old woman called Fatma said on Wednesday (April 8) as she cooked over a makeshift oven. She has been living in the slum for twenty years and her children play amongst the debris of the slum.
    Algeria's economy relies heavily on oil and gas exports and investment in the non-oil sector is too weak to create enough jobs for an overwhelmingly young population although Bouteflika has promised $150 billion for development spending.
    Supporters say he has won the trust of the people for steering the oil and gas exporter back to stability after a brutal civil conflict in the 1990s that claimed an estimated 150,000 lives.
    "Since Bouteflika became president he's brought safety to the country, not like before," said another slum dweller.
    But turnout in 2007 legislative polls was 35 percent, the lowest of any Algerian election to date, and with many despondent that there will be no change and others, like Abderazak, unable to vote, Algeria could see an even lower turnout this time round.
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