Algeria Voter Turnout Higher Than Expected, Islamists Seen to Gain Ground

ALGIERS (NNN-alarabiya): Algerian authorities announced a relatively high turnout for Thursday’s legislative polls despite widespread mistrust disaffection that marked the campaign as moderate Islamists are expected to gain large share of seats in the parliament, easing pressure for change in a country left behind by last year’s “Arab Spring.”

“Global turnout, national territory and diaspora combined, stands at 42.9 percent,” Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia told reporters.

Turnout hit a record low of 35 percent in polls in 2007.

Despite the official turnout figure, many polling stations in Algiers seemed largely deserted and the overwhelming majority of voters were elderly but the state reported the highest turnouts in remote border regions.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s National Liberation Front (FLN), the former single party, and its two government allies, including the country’s main legal Islamist party, were confident of victory.

But a strong performance for Islamists would bring Algeria, which supplies about one fifth of Europe’s natural gas imports, into line with Arab neighbors who have seen Islamists come to power after last year’s uprisings.

In contrast to countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, the Islamists seeking office in Algeria are firmly part of the establishment, have no radical agenda and are unlikely to try to undo the ruling elite’s grip on power.

Algeria’s rulers responded to the upheavals in neighboring countries by promising its own people an “Algerian Spring” - a managed process of reform, with the election as the first step.

“The young people will make an Algerian Spring in this election,” said Bouguera Soltani, whose mildly Islamist “Green Alliance” coalition is tipped to become one of the biggest forces in the new parliament.

“The 2012 parliament is different from the previous ones because it will have new prerogatives. People who boycott (the vote) will regret it,” he said on Thursday as he voted near his home in Staoueli, a town west of the capital.

But many believe real power lies with an informal network commonly known by the French term “le pouvoir,” or “the power,” which is unelected, has been around for years and has its roots in the security forces. Officials deny this network exists.

Yacine Zaid, a human rights activist and opponent of the ruling elite, said he thought the election was “a masquerade, a circus. ... The authorities have always dared to do what they want, to give whatever figures are in their head.”

However, there is little appetite for a revolt. Energy revenues have lifted living standards and people look with alarm at the bloodshed in neighboring Libya after its insurrection.

In Algeria, a conflict in the 1990s between security forces and Islamist insurgents, which killed an estimated 200,000 people, still casts a shadow. The fighting started after the military-backed government annulled an election which hardline Islamists were poised to win. -NNN-alarabiya