ALGIERS, Algeria — Violence tarnished Algeria’s presidential election today with a bombing near one polling station and fires set at six others. The vote is expected to give incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika five more years to try to quell terrorism and reform the lackluster economy.
Two police officers were injured when a bomb exploded near a voting station in Sid Ali Boulad, in the Boumerdes region, known as a hotbed of al-Qaida militants, a local police officer and a security officer in the area said.
Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni confirmed on national television that there had been a terrorist incident in the area, some 40 miles east of Algiers, but disclosed no details.
A local official near Bouira, 60 miles east of the capital in the often restive Kabylie region, confirmed that angry youths had set fire to six polling stations.
Riot police clashed with groups at several voting centers, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of Algerian restrictions on discussing security matters. Zerhouni, the interior minister, said there had been incidents at 10 voting stations in the region.
Bouteflika’s opponents, from left-wing parties to most Islamists and al-Qaida’s local branch, have called for an election boycott, predicting fraud.
Whether Algerians even bother to vote remains the key test for Bouteflika who has led this U.S. ally with its vast oil and gas reserves since 1999. Widely credited with pacifying the country after a decade of Islamic insurgency, Bouteflika has said he wants to win by a landslide to continue his program of national reconciliation and reconstruction.
Helicopters hovered and police lined nearly every street in the capital as people trickled into voting bureaus today, a weekend day in this Muslim country. A day earlier, suspected al-Qaida militants staged an ambush east of Algiers, killing three security guards working for a Brazilian company and abducting one, local newspapers reported today, quoting anonymous security officials
The El Watan and Liberte daily newspapers said the attack targeted the construction site of a seaport near the town of Jijel, some 215 miles east of Algiers.
El Watan and other dailies also reported one police officer was killed in a separate terror bombing Wednesday on a road near Bouira, some 60 miles east of Algiers.
Officials have not commented on the attacks.
Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni said more than 9 percent of voters had cast their ballot nationwide by 10:30 local time. Some 31 percent of the 900,000 Algerians registered abroad also have voted, he said.
Bouteflika cast his ballot amid tight security next to his home in the Algiers neighborhood of El Biar. Cell phones were scrambled while Bouteflika voted, for fear of remote-controlled bombs.
Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, a militant group formed from the last remnants of the insurgency in the 1990s, stages sporadic, deadly attacks and has called for a boycott of the vote.
Campaign organizers said they were hoping for good weather to boost turnout, which is seen as the only real suspense in the election.
The president, 72, had the constitution changed last year so he could run again and enjoys support from all government players, along with labor and business unions.
More than 20 million Algerians are registered to vote. Most have seemed indifferent to the election, with many saying their voice won’t be heard because the election result is predetermined.
Critics say Bouteflika hasn’t done enough to spread the country’s oil riches to the broader populace. Boosting private entrepreneurship and small businesses and diversifying the largely state-managed economy are viewed as key challenges for the president.
“They’re trying to drag a cart with no wheels,” said Azzedine Besri, 22, to describe the state of Algeria’s governance. The spare auto parts vendor said he wasn’t interested in voting, echoing a widespread skepticism among youth — who represent 70 percent of the population.
The contenders, which include one woman from a small far-left party, two nationalists and two moderate Islamists, charge the race will be unfair.
Most leading Islamists are banned from politics in this North African country where Islam is the state religion. The violence in the 1990s exploded after the army canceled legislative elections that an Islamist party was slated to win.
“We’ve seen frauds, votes have been bought, envelopes passed around” in all recent elections, said Louisa Hanoune, who heads the Trotskyist Workers’ Party. “We can’t go on like this,” she told reporters Wednesday.
Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni, who is in charge of organizing the elections and will announce the results, said voting transparency procedures “are largely sufficient.”
He told national radio that observers for each candidate could monitor the election in the country’s 47,000 voting bureaus.
No U.N. observers will monitor the voting. Some 200 observers have come from the African Union, the Islamic Conference and the Arab League.
National radio reported late Wednesday that turnout was reaching about 75 percent in some of the election bureaus for nomads in the southern Sahara Desert, who started voting early because of the huge distances they have to cross on camel to cast their ballot.
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