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National Liberation Front Wins Algerian Elections
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An Algerian demonstrator throws a stone during clashes with police.
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ALGIERS,
May 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The National Liberation
Front (FLN), Algeria's former sole political party, won Friday, May
31, 199 seats in the 389-seat national assembly in legislative
elections.
The
elections were marked by low turn-out and an almost complete boycott
in the Berber homeland, Kabylie, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
Throughout
Algeria, turnout was 47.49 percent, the lowest since the north African
country gained independence from France in 1962. Turn-out at the last
elections, held in 1997, was over 65 percent.
The
FLN, which ruled the north African country single-handedly from
independence in 1962 until 1991, was assured of victory in several key
districts, including the capital, Algiers.
A
member of the current ruling coalition alongside the National
Democratic Rally (RND), founded in 1997 under then president Liamine
Zeroual, and the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), a moderate
Islamic party, the FLN also won seven of the 11 seats in Bejaia, in
the troubled Kabylie region, according to AFP.
Only
2.6 percent of voters turned out in Bejaia, heeding a call to boycott
the vote by the leaders of the large Berber minority, which has its
homeland in Kabylie, and two pro-Berber opposition parties.
According
to AFP, the other four seats in Bejaia went to the RND and to the
small Workers' Party, which claimed that its supporters in Kabylie had
been intimidated by members of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and
the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), who called for the boycott.
The
poll was marred by violence in Kabylie on Thursday, with one person
killed and three injured during clashes between demonstrators and
police, AFP reported.
Moreover,
twenty-five civilians, including 14 children, were also killed
Thursday, May 30, 2002, in an overnight raid on Sendjas village, 120
miles west of Algiers, according to the British daily newspaper, The
Independent.
Riot
police used teargas to disperse youths in the provincial capital Tizi
Ouzou, where only 175 of the planned 880 polling stations opened.
Other voting centers were shut down by youths and ballot boxes were
burned, an AFP correspondent reported.
Anti-government
demonstrators had also uprooted trees to make roadblocks, while most
traders in Kabylie heeded a general strike call by Berber leaders,
correspondents said.
Kabylie
represents only about 30 seats out of the 389 in the new assembly,
which will have a five-year mandate and be elected by proportional
representation.
The
legislative election is the first since 1997 and the second since the
military cancelled a certain victory by Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)
party in a 1992 poll, provoking a decade-long civil war that has
claimed more than 150,000 lives.
The
last parliamentary elections were marred by massive fraud, and
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, himself elected in 1999 when all his
opponents withdrew charging vote-rigging, has sought to ward off a
recurrence by setting up a watchdog group in April, AFP said.
The
ethnic Berber minority, who comprise five million of the 31 million
population, named the day of the elections "a day of shame"
and boycotted the vote, according to the Independent.
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