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Posted on 04/08/2004 12:17:33 PM PDT by BJClinton
ALGIERS (AFP) - Algerians began voting in an optimistic atmosphere in what many see as a genuine -- and unprecedented -- democratic election pitting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika against his former right-hand man, Ali Benflis, and four other rivals.
"If it goes well we can say democracy has taken off in Algeria," said 65-year-old Omar Belhousse after casting his ballot in Algiers.
Ticking off a list of firsts for the north African country, he said: "It's the first time we've had the freedom to express our will, it's the first time the opposition is really expressing itself. It's the first time we have had several candidates to choose from."
It is also the first election in which the powerful military -- the traditional arbiter of Algerian politics since independence more than four decades ago -- has pledged to steer clear as Algeria's 18 million-strong electorate goes to the polls.
In addition, electoral laws have been liberalized so that the candidates can follow votes from polling stations to the final tallying center, and some 120 international observers will be present -- two other firsts for Algeria.
Turnout averaged some 46 percent after eight hours of polling, but in restive Kabylie, the northeastern homeland of Algeria's Berber minority, it was only about 14 percent, the interior ministry announced.
Many voters heeded a boycott call by part of the region's traditional leadership in Tizi Ouzou, but turnout was slightly higher in Kabylie's second city Bejaia and other towns in the region, where secularist candidate Said Sadi has a large following.
In the small town of Freha near Tizi Ouzou, a riot broke out after police used teargas against youths who were destroying ballot boxes. A mysterious death overnight Tuesday fueled tensions in the town.
Kabylie is a hotbed of animosity towards Bouteflika, accused of grossly mishandling a crisis that has gripped the region since the so-called Black Spring of 2001, when scores of people were killed in a security forces crackdown on rioters.
Bouteflika, elected five years ago after all six of his rivals pulled out alleging rampant vote-rigging, was chased out of town when he tried to campaign in Tizi Ouzou last week.
The president centered his re-election campaign on his efforts to end the country's devastating civil war, which has claimed some 150,000 lives since 1992.
The duel between Bouteflika and Benflis, the government chief he sacked last year in an acrimonious falling-out, has also lent suspense to the vote, the third presidential poll since the end of single-party rule in 1989.
The Bouteflika-Benflis split has divided the longtime ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), forcing the president to stand as an independent with Benflis bearing the FLN standard.
Bouteflika's other challengers are Louisa Hanoune, a Trotskyite who is Algeria's first woman presidential candidate, radical Islamist Abdallah Djaballah and Ali Fawzi Rebaine, head of a small nationalist party.
Polls were set to close at 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) in the big cities, earlier in less populous areas, with preliminary results expected in the evening.
If no candidate garners more than 50 percent of the vote on Thursday, an unprecedented second-round run-off will be held in two weeks.
Samir Bousaadouna, 32, said he had taken the opportunity to cast a "protest vote" against the status quo he feels is represented by both Bouteflika and Benflis, in the hope that the election will go to a second round.
He voted for outsider Rebaine, who has pledged to beat corruption and reform the judicial system, under which Rebaine himself, as well as two other candidates, Hanoune and Sadi, have spent time behind bars.
Past experience has inevitably fueled cynicism, especially for politicians outside the military establishment that arose from the FLN's hard-fought victory in the 1954-1962 war of independence from France.
"This is Algeria," shrugged a Tizi Ouzou shopkeeper.
Most observers agree that suspicions would crop up, given the distribution of support among the six candidates, if Bouteflika wins outright on Thursday.
A joint communique issued Tuesday by the president's three main rivals -- Benflis, Djaballah and Sadi -- alleged that a "credible plot" was being hatched in which Bouteflika's camp would claim victory with 53 to 55 percent of the vote even before all the ballots were counted.
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If it works out, I'd like to be the first to welcome Algeria to the free world.
Once men get a taste of freedom, they can never return to the old ways of bondage.
Never forget. Eternal vigilance.
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