For the first time since independence more than four decades ago, many Algerians felt their vote could make a real difference as they mulled Tuesday whether to re-elect President Abdelaziz Bouteflika or throw him out in favour of one of his five challengers.
With campaigning over, the outcome in Thursday’s vote is far from certain in a country where people had previously cast their ballots, even in the multiparty elections allowed since 1990, assuming that the all-powerful military had made up their minds for them.
”Analysts and other observers are losing themselves in conjecture, seemingly unable to figure out the main trends that will determine how Algerian voters will behave,” wrote editorialist Said Boucetta in the daily L’Actualite on Tuesday.
All six candidates ran vigorous campaigns, dubbed ”American-style” in the Algerian press, holding hundreds of rallies with few incidents reported, and filling the airwaves and the lively independent press with interviews.
Bouteflika (67) is widely praised for having damped down the North African country’s devastating civil war — which has claimed about 150 000 lives since 1992 — to a low-level conflict, and has asked the electorate to allow him to complete his national reconciliation plan.
He is also credited with restoring Algeria’s place on the international stage through a charm offensive that took him to Western, Asian and Gulf capitals since coming to power in 1999.
Bouteflika, enjoying the advantages of incumbency, can also claim credit for a sharp rise in revenue from oil and gas imports, the country’s main source of foreign exchange — thanks more to steadily rising oil prices than anything else.
Algeria posted a 6,8% growth rate in 2003 compared with near-zero results in the early 1990s when the civil war was at its height, and foreign exchange reserves are now estimated at $33-billion.
But the president’s opponents have found plenty of chinks in his armour, from the 25% unemployment rate to severe shortages of housing and water, and the fact that half of the population of 32-million remains under the poverty threshold.
Emblematic of all these problems is the plight of Algeria’s Berber minority, who make up about one-fifth of the population and hold Bouteflika accountable for failing to address longstanding economic and social demands that boiled over into deadly riots three years ago.
Kabylie, the Berber homeland in the northeast, suddenly found itself the centre of attention as candidates flocked there in search of votes. A visit by Bouteflika last week backfired, provoking riots and forcing him to beat a hasty retreat.
Bouteflika’s top challenger, Ali Benflis, has plenty of ammunition, having been the president’s close ally and head of government before being sacked last May over deep policy differences.
Stumping in Tizi Ouzou, the main city of Kabylie, on the last day of the campaign on Monday, Benflis observed a minute of silence for the 100 or so victims of the 2001 unrest, known as the Black Spring, and pledged to make their demands a priority.
A massive crowd attended the rally, even though their favourite son is Said Sadi of the Rally for Culture and Democracy. Benflis, like Sadi and Algeria’s first woman candidate, workers’ champion Louisa Hanoune, have all promised to officialise the Berber language Tamazight, a key demand.
While Bouteflika has campaigned on the broad themes of peace and stability, his challengers have hammered away on social issues.
Hanoune told her supporters: ”It’s a question of halting the deterioration of social conditions that fuel violence and exclusion.”
Likewise appealing to the downtrodden, the one radical Islamist candidate in the running, Abdallah Djaballah, expressed sympathy Monday for ”the suffering people” and said Algeria is ”capable, with the riches it possesses, to guarantee work for all”.
Fawzi Rebaine, leader of a small nationalist party, Ahd 54, promising a surprise on Thursday, told a rally: ”It is about time the people’s children are delivered from the shackles of poverty and injustice to taste the fruits of independence.” — Sapa-AFP