Bouteflika supporters celebrate what they called “overwhelming” victory

ALGIERS, April 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Algerian Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni announced Friday, April 9 that that incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been re-elected into office with 83.49 percent of the votes.

Giving Bouteflika an overwhelming victory after Thursday's Presidential poll in the north African country, the Minister told a news briefing that former Prime Minister Ali Benflis took 7.93 percent of the votes, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Abdallah Djaballah, an Islamic candidate, came third, with 4.84 percent, according to the official results.

Zerhouni "categorically" denied that any fraud had taken place, saying there had been "complete monitoring" of the election by representatives of each candidate and by international observers who watched over both the voting and the counting of results.

Sadi, the head of the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), won 1.93 percent, and the Trotskyite candidate Louisa Hanoune took 1.16 percent.

Hanoune, standing for the Workers' Party, was the first woman to contest a Presidential election in Algeria, which has been wracked by a low-level civil war since 1992.

The final candidate, Ali Fawzi Rebaine of a nationalist party, Ahd 54, was officially credited with 0.64 percent of the votes.

Benflis had been seen as the serious challenger to Bouteflika in the first Algerian poll to have aroused hopes of a genuinely democratic election in the country's troubled history.

Even before the official announcement of results, jubilant supporters of Bouteflika have been saying he won re-election hands down.

"It's an overwhelming victory," said Bouteflika campaign official Aibi Mohamed Fawzi as flag-bedecked busloads and carloads of cheering supporters cruised the streets of the city center. "We're very happy."

Fawzi said the Bouteflika campaign's independent tally gave the incumbent some 70 percent of the vote, with Djaballah a distant second, according to AFP.

However, three of Bouteflika's five challengers in Thursday's election, held under liberalized election rules that enabled candidates to track results, disagreed.

Bouteflika's arch-rival Benflis issued a joint statement with fellow candidates Sadi and Djaballah late Thursday saying that their projections showed that no candidate had garnered more than 50 percent of the vote.

Even as Bouteflika supporters celebrated victory into the early hours of the morning, ahead of the release of the official figures, the three were denouncing the "fraud that has begun to work".

"In the light of information gathered at the campaign headquarters of the three candidates (...) it is apparent that the general trend is towards a two-round poll," said the statement, issued before the official closure of the polling stations.

But the Bouteflika campaign dismissed the rival candidates' claim, saying that they wanted to "disobey the popular will" and courted "grave dangers for the entire nation”.

With this election, for the first time many Algerians felt their vote could make a difference where previously the all-powerful military called the shots, even since the end of single-party rule by the National Liberation Front (FLN), AFP said.

Algerians waiting for the incumbent President

The military pledged neutrality in the vote, which came against the backdrop of an acrimonious duel between Bouteflika and Benflis, the government chief he sacked last year, causing a split in the FLN and forcing the President to stand as an independent with Benflis bearing the FLN standard.

Benflis, the FLN Secretary General, and Bouteflika, who was elected five years ago in an empty contest after all six of his rivals pulled out alleging fraud, were widely considered twin front-runners in the vote.

Mohammed Benchicou, publisher of the respected newspaper Le Matin and an outspoken critic of Bouteflika, was outraged over the celebrations of the President's presumed victory

"What victory?" he thundered. "We are experiencing an outrageous fraud. It's impossible that Bouteflika won with 70 percent," Benchicou told AFP. "It will be the first time a dictator is democratically elected."

Pasqualina Neapoletano, who headed a five-member observer team from the European Parliament, told reporters in Algiers Tuesday: "We are attuned to the risk of fraud. We are very aware and cautious (of the risk), but also of the changes towards openness" witnessed ahead of the vote.

She said, however, that if one candidate won in a landslide, "that will mean that something's wrong," adding: "We're not stupid."

Enrique Olmos, the European Union's top representative in Algiers, said the parliamentary mission would issue a statement following the official announcement of the results.