Algerians Cast Votes Amid Fear Most Don’t Believe Election Will End Years Of Bloodshed

Millions of war-weary Algerians marched to the polls Thursday in an election the government said marked the re-establishment of democracy in this blood-soaked country.

But among voters, fear and skepticism ruled the day, with charges of ballot fraud emerging around the country and threats of terrorism holding turnout down. Those Algerians who did participate said they had little hope the violence that has engulfed this north African nation for the past five years would end in the near future.

“I hope my voice and my vote can bring something to the situation,” said Sami, a 30-year-old doctor, who declined to give her surname for fear of reprisals. “But I just don’t know if it will.”

Of the 15 million people registered to vote in Thursday’s municipal elections, the overall turnout was better than 66 percent, officials said.

The National Democratic Party, a coalition of backers of President Liamine Zeroual, was expected to win most of the council seats, and Thursday night party supporters poured into the streets of central Algiers to celebrate without waiting for the official results.

The elections followed June legislative balloting in which the NDP took 157 of the 380 seats.

Thursday’s balloting comes against the backdrop of a savage battle between the government and Islamic militants that has killed well over 60,000 Algerians - some estimates go as high as 120,000 - since 1992 and created a suffocating climate of violence and fear.

During the course of the election campaign, nine candidates were killed. Over this past weekend alone, suspected Muslim militants killed about 20 people in attacks. In the weeks preceding the election, massacres of unarmed civilians have moved north to the outskirts of Algiers itself, leaving hundreds of people dead, their throats cut, their bodies disemboweled and burned.

“Our hearts are full of terror,” said Kabahi Louize, a veiled, 90-year-old woman, after she voted Thursday with her granddaughter in a middle-class neighborhood in central Algiers. “We are scared here. We are scared that a new generation will be exterminated by terrorists.”

The current crisis began in 1992, when the Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS, appeared poised to win national legislative elections, only to have the army step in at the last moment to ban the party and cancel the vote. Since then, a full-scale war between the government and the Islamists has developed. Most of the killings now are believed to be the work of the most extreme Islamist faction, known as the GIA.

FIS was barred from participating in Thursday’s elections and had called for a boycott, leaving many observers unsure just how much credence to give to the results.

Outside one polling center Thursday, a group of young, unemployed men, known here as “hittistes” - “wall-leaners” - were standing on their usual corner, explaining to anyone who would listen why they were not taking part in the vote.

“We’re not voting, we don’t want to and we don’t care about it,” said one man who would identify himself only as Sofiane. He and his friends said they had no jobs, were unable to find housing and couldn’t raise the money necessary to get married. They are the kind of people whose discontent led to the FIS victories of the early 1990s, analysts say.

Inside and outside the polling places, Algerians Thursday expressed great uncertainty about who was to blame for the recent escalation of violence. Some blamed the GIA, while others said they did not know what to make of the widespread rumors that the government itself might be in some way complicit in the violence. Many noted that both the government and the Islamists are badly factionalized.

“We blame the terrorists, but we don’t know who they are,” said Lalia, a radio station employee. “We imagine them as monsters, but we can’t even conceive of them. I very much want to know who is who. These are questions I ask myself all the time.”