Algeria's Bouteflika Votes in Wheelchair in 4th Term Bid
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, seeking a fourth presidential term, cast his ballot from a wheelchair Thursday as Algerians voted in an election he is widely expected to win despite chronic health problems.
In his first public appearance in two years, a smiling Bouteflika arrived at a polling station in El Biar district of Algiers and waved but made no comment to reporters covering an election tainted by fraud warnings and boycott calls.
More than 260,000 police were deployed to protect the 50,000 polling booths across Africa's largest country, with 23 million Algerians eligible to vote in a contest between six candidates.
The 77-year-old president, who rose to power in 1999, is the firm favorite. But all eyes will be on turnout and any signs of vote rigging, before polling stations close at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) after 11 hours of voting.
Sporadic violence has marred the election process, especially in the restive Kabylie region.
Clashes at three places in Bouira province, between police and youths seeking to disrupt the vote, wounded around 40 people, local sources said, and five protesters shouting anti-regime slogans were arrested in the capital.
For Algeria's independent newspapers, the election outcome is a foregone conclusion.
"It's just a matter of the curtain coming down this evening on a bad taste political drama," commented El Watan, saying the election lacked credibility.
Bouteflika faces the damaging prospect of a low turnout, with youth activists and opposition parties loudly calling on Algerians to snub the election and many questioning whether he is fit to rule.
He has been seen only rarely on television in recent months, looking frail and barely audible, after suffering a mini-stroke last year which confined him to hospital for three months.
When he last appeared in public, in the run-up to a May 2012 parliamentary election, Bouteflika addressed Algeria's youth to declare: "My generation has served its time."
His intention to seek re-election, announced in February, sparked derision and at times scathing criticism in the independent media.
However, Bouteflika remains popular with many Algerians, especially for helping to end the devastating civil war of the 1990s.
"We are voting for peace, it's all we want," said Khadija, a widow in her 50s, at a polling station in a village in the Sidi Moussa district south of Algiers.
Her husband was killed in August 1997 along with nearly 100 others in Sidi Moussa in an attack blamed on the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which staged a wave of massacres in its campaign against the government, at times wiping out entire villages.
But there is also anger and frustration among many Algerians for whom the likely prospect of another five-year term for an ageing president disabled by a stroke is unacceptable.
Youth protest group Barakat (Enough) was founded just two months ago specifically to challenge Bouteflika's re-election bid.
With Barakat and a coalition of opposition parties, both Islamist and secular, urging voters to shun the election, participation will be a key issue.
At 1300 GMT, with five hours of polling left, officials said 23.25 percent of the electorate had voted.
A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable estimated voter turnout in the 2009 election at between 25 and 30 percent, compared with the official figure of 74.11 percent.
Bouteflika's main rival, former premier Ali Benflis who ran against him in 2004 but lost heavily, charged the vote was rigged 10 years ago and said fraud would be his "main adversary" on Thursday.
Benflis warned that he would "not keep quiet" if the election is stolen, and said he had an "army" of supporters monitoring the polls "consisting of 60,000 people, most of them young men and women armed to the teeth with conviction".
"Why vote?" asked Khadija, 82, in central Algiers where former premier and staunch Bouteflika ally Ahmed Ouyahia had just cast his ballot.
"If I had my voting card I would give my vote to Ali Benflis. But with this fraud... maybe my vote would go to Bouteflika. How can I know?"
Source: Agence France Presse
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