Algerians overwhelmingly approved a peace plan that provides a broad amnesty for Islamic extremists, despite critics' charges it whitewashes past crimes, official referendum results showed yesterday.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation got more than 97 percent of Thursday's vote, a giant win that could further strengthen President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The "no" polled less than 3 percent.
Nearly 80 percent of the more than 18 million eligible voters cast ballots, the minister said. In Khenchla, an eastern town 100km from Algeria's border with Tunisia, 99.95 percent voted.
But the turnout rate was far lower -- just over 11 percent -- in the main towns of Tizi-Ouzou and Bejaia in Kabylie, a restive Berber region east of the capital Algiers where there had been calls to boycott the vote.
The interior minister said the results "reflect Algerians' desire to live in peace and to turn the page of the tragedy that our country has lived through for 15 years."
Critics of Bouteflika's charter, from opposition politicians to human rights groups and families of people who disappeared in Algeria's bloody Islamic insurgency, had predicted it would easily pass, especially given the lack of real debate.
The popular Bouteflika also won a landslide re-election victory last year, five years after taking office following an election tarnished by allegations of fraud.
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