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President poised for third term as Algeria votes
Thu Apr 9, 2009 3:49pm EDT
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By Christian Lowe and Hamid Ould Ahmed
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was on course for a resounding election win on Thursday after official turnout figures indicated a limited response to opposition calls for a boycott.
But bomb blasts at a polling station east of the capital wounded two policemen and underscored the challenges Bouteflika faces in trying to stamp out a lingering Islamist insurgency.
Victory for Bouteflika, a 72-year-old veteran of Algeria's war for independence from France, was never in doubt but many analysts predicted a low turnout would harm the president's legitimacy in the eyes of some of Algeria's 34 million people.
Some of Bouteflika's opponents, including the leader of al Qaeda's North African wing, urged people to stay at home, tapping into a sense among some voters that the election will do nothing to relieve widespread poverty and joblessness.
Polling stations closed at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) in the vast energy-producing country, which lies across the Mediterranean from the European Union, and the Interior Ministry is expected to announce the first results early on Friday.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said that as of 6 p.m., 62.18 percent of voters had cast their ballots -- exceeding the Bouteflika campaign's target of matching the 58.1 percent turnout at the last presidential election.
"These are extraordinary figures," said Zerhouni, whose ministry organized the election.
Algerian lawmakers cleared the way for Bouteflika to stand for a third term last year by abolishing term limits. Critics said that could allow him to serve as president for life.
"The high participation (in the election)... seems to be a message to those who hoped for a low turnout to harm the credibility of the election," political science professor Ismail Maaref Ghalia told Reuters.
"But will this good turnout change the country's social and economic situation?" he added.
BACK TO STABILITY
Bouteflika's ability to retain the support of Algeria's people matters to the outside world: his OPEC-member country has the world's 15th biggest oil reserves and accounts for 20 percent of the EU's gas imports.
European governments fear renewed conflict or economic collapse could unleash a flood of illegal migrants into the European Union, while the United States says it needs the support of Bouteflika's government in its global fight against al Qaeda.
Supporters say Bouteflika deserves credit for steering Africa's second largest country back to stability after the government and Islamists fought a civil conflict that killed an estimated 150,000 people in the 1990s.
He has promised to spend $150 billion on development projects and create 3 million jobs. Continued...
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