The Algerian election on Thursday was billed as the second most important African poll this year — after South Africa’s this week.
Twelve years after truncating the poll that seemed to be heading the way of Islamic fundamentalists, the Algerian authorities are still paying a heavy public relations price.
But the jury is out on whether those aborted elections would not have reflected the true will of the Algerian people. The extremists had used widespread violence and intimidation. The vast majority of the population, fed up with the corruption and inefficiency of the government, had stopped bothering to vote.
In the ensuing terror campaign more than 100 000 people died. The army generals who ran the country from 1992 until 1995 — and some say still do behind the scenes — are widely accused of allowing some massacres to make the point about the horrible nature of the extremists.
Since the presidential election of 1995 Algerians have visited the polls more than most Africans. In addition to the two rounds of presidential elections — the last in 1999 brought Abdelaziz Bouteflika to power — there have also been two legislative elections and two local elections.
The Algerian government has cause to say that democracy is now firmly implanted and that the days of cynicism and lethargy are over.
It also likes to say that the violence is behind it. Certainly, Bouteflika’s amnesty has ended the endemic political killings that kept Algeria in the horror headlines.
Nevertheless, no fewer than 70 people have died in the past month of electioneering. But it is all relative in Algeria, which lost more than one million people in its fight for liberation from France in 1962.
During the 2002 legislative elections the treatment of the minority Berbers gained most international attention. Bouteflika has recognised their Tamazight language as official and it is now taught in schools. But once again the Berbers — who make up a third of Algeria’s population — say this is not enough and threaten to boycott the poll.
To stave off violence, an army of international observers is spread across a country twice the size of South Africa.
The focal point of the campaign has been the fight between Bouteflika and his former prime minister and confidant Ali Benflis, whom he fired a year ago.
Bouteflika’s international standing — always high as a former foreign minister and president of the United Nations General Assembly — has improved in his five years at the helm.
Countries like the United States and Britain, which once regarded the terror heaped on the Algiers government as something it might have deserved, have altogether changed their tune since September 11 2001.
Bouteflika was the first African leader to see President George W Bush after the Twin Towers collapsed into Manhattan. The British government has admitted to getting Algerian assistance in its fight against terrorism. The victim of some of the world’s worst terrorism has perforce become one of the experts on the scourge. Algeria is becoming the seat of the African Union centre for the study of terrorism.
It is Bouteflika’s ability to corner this market and to bring relative stability to his country that is expected to give him the edge this week.
Benflis has shown signs of frustration, accusing the president’s supporters of disrupting his meetings.
Bouteflika has something to prove. His 1999 victory was marred by the withdrawal of opposition candidates on the eve of the poll, alleging that it could not possibly be conducted fairly with Bouteflika as the front man for the military.
The president has spent the past five years distancing himself from the military and polishing his international image.
To obviate the religious turmoil, Algeria’s revised Constitution limits candidates to fighting secular campaigns.
Nevertheless, Abdallah Djballah of the Movement for National Reform has insisted that ”the Islamic platform will be in power after Thursday”.
Algeria also has its first woman presidential candidate among the half-dozen hopefuls. Louisa Hanoune is campaigning as a union leader seeking to improve the lot of Algerian workers.
To neighbouring Morocco’s chagrin, Bouteflika has steadfastly maintained Algeria’s support for the Western Sahara, which Morocco has occupied in defiance of the United Nations since 1976.
Bouteflika tugged at the fiercely independent, not to say stubborn, spirit of his compatriots when he recalled the costs incurred by this principled stand and the covert international support for the fundamentalist terror campaign against the authorities.
”Algeria was isolated, and no country, no brother, no friend, nor any other dared to look at us, and this is why Algeria must rely only on itself,” said Bouteflika.