ALGERIA: Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika poised for third term after high turnout at Algerian elections

Record ID: 573876

  • Title: ALGERIA: Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika poised for third term after high turnout at Algerian elections
  • Date: 11th April 2009
  • Summary: MAN IN THE STREET READING THE NEWSPAPER
  • Embargoed: 26th April 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Algeria
  • Country: Algeria
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAC4S8MT7E7ABA9R7CHNZJ1MKRL
  • Story Text: Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was poised for an emphatic election win, tightening his hold on the north African oil producer troubled by a lingering Islamist insurgency.
    Victory for Bouteflika, a 72-year-old veteran of Algeria's war for independence from France, was never in doubt but many analysts predicted a low turnout would harm the president's legitimacy in the eyes of some of Algeria's 34 million people.
    But a bomb attack east of the capital on polling day wounded two police officers and underscored the challenges Bouteflika faces in tackling the militants and reaching out to sections of society frustrated at widespread poverty and joblessness.

    "There is security everywhere now, everywhere from north to south and east to west," said one Bouteflika voter, Khaledi Abd Rahmane.
    The Interior Ministry in Algeria, a vast Muslim country across the Mediterranean Sea from the European Union, was expected to announce the winner at 0900 GMT.
    The ministry had already announced turnout was 74.11 percent -- higher than in the last presidential vote and an indication opposition calls for a boycott had not been heeded by many of Algeria's 34 million people.

    "I voted Bouteflika, you won't find a president like Bouteflika, not at the moment, he is the only one who can help Algeria," said one man.

    "I am very happy, he is the only man to convince us, honestly, he has all of Algeria behind him," another woman, Zohra Khadim said.
    The five other candidates on the ballot pose no serious challenge to Bouteflika, a 72-year-old veteran of Algeria's war for independence from France running for a third term. But analysts had predicted a low turnout would harm his legitimacy.
    Algerian lawmakers cleared the way for Bouteflika to stand for a third term by abolishing term limits, a move critics said could allow him to serve as president for life.
    His ability to retain the support of Algeria's people matters to the outside world: his OPEC-member country has the world's 15th biggest oil reserves and accounts for 20 percent of the EU's gas imports.
    European governments fear turmoil in Algeria could unleash a flood of illegal migrants, while the United States says it needs the support of Bouteflika's government in its global fight against al Qaeda.
    Supporters say Bouteflika deserves credit for steering Africa's second largest country back to stability after the government and Islamists fought a civil conflict that killed an estimated 150,000 people in the 1990s.
    But some sections of the population are disillusioned with the political process and analysts say that helps feed the low-level Islamist insurgency, now affiliated to al Qaeda, that is still rumbling on in Algeria.
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