Pro-president party prevails in Algerian election
June 6, 1997
Web posted at: 11:18 a.m. EDT (1518 GMT)
ALGIERS, Algeria (CNN) -- Algeria's pro-president party, formed only two months ago, swept to victory in the nation's first parliamentary elections since a Muslim insurgency began five years ago, results showed Friday.
The Thursday voting was relatively calm, but opposition parties cried fraud.
According to Interior Ministry figures, President Liamine Zeroual's National Democratic Rally won 155 of the National Assembly's 380 seats. The pro-government and former ruling party National Liberation Front took 64 seats.
Interior Minister Mustapha Benmansour hailed the results as a building block for strengthening democracy in Africa's second largest nation.
"This historic vote ... is an enormous progress and a great victory dedicated to the nation and future generations to build and strengthen democracy and the state of law," Benmansour said during a post-election news conference.
The Movement for a Society of Peace, a moderate Islamic party, won 69 seats. Several other parties split a few dozen seats.
Low turnout
Zeroual had been widely expected to win Thursday's election, and sought a mandate for his struggle to crush the Muslim insurgency that has left 60,000 people dead.
The Islamic rebellion began after the military regime canceled legislative elections in 1992 when an Islamic fundamentalist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, appeared on the verge of winning.
The now-outlawed Islamic Salvation Front called for a boycott and sought to intimidate voters ahead of the balloting.
Final results showed a 65.5 percent turnout, more than nine points lower than when Zeroual, a retired army general first appointed president, was elected president in 1995.
The lowest turnout Thursday was in the capital Algiers -- 44 percent -- which has been battered by years of violence, including recent bombings that killed 22 people and wounded more than 100 others.
Fraud allegations
Even before results were announced, opposition parties were complaining that non-existent votes were cast in the government's favor and that observers were not given free access to voting stations.
The Movement for a Society of Peace party filed complaints for nearly 400 cases of election fraud and expected to file more. The party alleged officials tampered with so-called "itinerant polling stations" used to gather votes from the scattered population.
Hocine Ait-Ahmed, an opposition leader for a center-left party, said "the elections were neither free nor honest," in an interview to be published Saturday in France's Le Croix newspaper.
At least two other opposition parties announced their intentions to file complaints about voting irregularities.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Algerians hope election will end violence - June 5, 1997
- Algerians prepare for Thursday's parliamentary vote - June 4, 1997
Related site:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser windowExternal sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
Sound off on our message boards
Tell us what you think!
You said it...
© 1997 Cable News Network, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.