Algerians voted yesterday in a presidential election seen as a key test for the Muslim country's emerging democracy after a civil war between Islamist guerrillas and a secular government spread terror and chaos.
The poll in the vast, energy-rich North African country is expected to be the freest since independence from France in 1962 and signals Algeria's return to the international fold.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is the favorite of six candidates to win an unprecedented second mandate until 2009. His main challenger was Ali Benflis, 59, his campaign manager in 1999 and prime minister until he sacked him a year ago.
PHOTO: AP
Bouteflika, 67, is credited with all but ending a holy war or jihad which flared after the military prevented a hardline Islamic party from gaining power in an election 12 years ago.
At least 100,000 people were killed in the decade of violence, the government says. Human rights groups say 150,000.
Opposition candidates have cried foul and accused authorities of planning fraud but offered no evidence to back the allegation.
Bouteflika was elected with nearly 74 percent of the vote in 1999 after all other candidates withdrew on the eve of election day, charging that the polls were rigged.
Allegations of fraud have marred all elections in Algeria since multi-party politics took root 15 years ago, with the powerful and opaque military establishment acting as kingmaker.
The army has pledged neutrality this time, an unprecedented statement of confidence in the country's fledgling democratic credentials.
Apart from Bouteflika, and with the exception of Algeria's first head of state in the early 1960s, Ahmed Ben Bella, all presidents have been former generals.
"The military's total withdrawal from the political scene has always been a precondition for democracy to take root," Communication and Culture Minister Khalida Toumi said.
"It was not possible during this past decade of bloodshed, she said."
"I am proud to say that on Islamic soil we can have democracy," she added.
"From Ottoman to French colonialism, to 30 years of one-party rule, to a decade of brutal terrorism -- that means democracy isn't achieved overnight," said the former anti-Islamist militant, who survived a bomb attack 10 years ago.
The election is being closely watched in the US which sees Algeria, because of its recent past and geopolitical situation, as crucial in its global war on terror.
North Africa has emerged as a springboard for Islamist guerrillas targeting the West, evidenced in the recent train bombings in Madrid. Islamist radicals thought to have ties to al-Qaeda, most of them Moroccans, have been blamed for the attacks on commuter trains on March 11 that killed 191 people.
From Mediterranean shores to the Sahara desert, some 40,000 polling stations opened at 8am and were scheduled to close 12 hours later.
There were 18 million eligible voters in the country of 32 million people.
Other candidates included an Islamic leader, a Trotskyite woman -- the country's first female presidential candidate -- and a champion of the Kabylie region, home to a restive ethnic Berber minority.
If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the election will go to a second-round run-off between the two leading candidates on April 22. Official results are not expected until today.
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