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ALGERIA: Participation in elections in 2007 up from

AFP - Algerians went to the polls Thursday to elect their representatives at the first election held in the wake of the Arab Spring, with a participation rate that promised in the late afternoon to be higher than the last election in 2007.

Voter turnout in parliamentary elections in Algeria reached 34.95% at 17.30 (1630 GMT), said the Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia. The rate reported by the AFP in 2007, quoting official sources, amounted to 17.00 local 28.39%. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika had repeatedly urged, that Tuesday afternoon, people and especially young people to vote massively. The official press had followed suit and all day calls broadcast on radio and television urging the 21.6 million voters to do their duty e ; lectoral. Bet apparently held, the interior minister said in late afternoon that in at least 18 departments, the participation rate had exceeded 40% and in others rate was even higher at 50%, especially in the south . In the third of Commons - 543 to 1.541 - the vote was extended to 1:00 to 8:00 p.m. local, said the Minister, after opening at 08hO0 for proportional representation for a ride to e ; read 462 deputies. In Bab El Oued, the traditional heart of Algiers, most people interviewed by the AFP But saying and talking of indifferent abstention. "I will not vote because the Constitution gives no power to Parliament," explained Hamid, 50, former militant Islamic Front of Hi (FIS), dissolved in March 1992 after the cancellation of the first multiparty legislative elections of December 1991 that the party was poised to win. The annulment of the election had plunged the country into a "civil war" terminology used by M- . Bouteflika Wednesday in Setif (is) - which has claimed nearly 200,000 lives.

Forty-four parties - including 21 new, seven Islamist groups and more than a hundred lists of independents - are in contention, but the results should be known that late Friday morning. At midday, things work out of "a normal and peaceful" ;, as the Chief Observer of the European Union Salafranca.  Vice President of the National Monitoring elections (CNSL) Ali Moussaoui However, AFP receiving complaints received about sixty. The Socialist Forces Front (FFS), the oldest opposition party leader Hocine Ait Ahmed Kabyle , denounced the "unacceptable disruption" of "many centers and polling stations." Several cities, he said, were "significant barriers to the exercise of voting rights". Islamists optimistic Wednesday by calling the young to vote, Mr. Bouteflika, 75, had assured him that "his generation had run its course" in Algeria, which this year celebrates 50 years of independence. In the wake of the Arab Spring that rocked neighboring countries, including Tunisia, he launched reforms to meet the demonstrations and riots that shook the country for years with a peak in January 2011, months of the fall of Tunisian President Ben Ali. Comforted by the victory of Islamist parties, the parties of this movement in Algeria say some of win the election "if they are honest and not tainted by fraud." But the Islamists said a fear of ballot stuffing, since the addition this year to file almost four million voters. "We are confident of our victory either by knockout or points," said Bouguerra Soltani, leader of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), the main of the "Alliance Algeria green" which also includes Nahda (Renaissance) and the El Islah Movement (Re form). "I anticipate that the classification will be between three forces: we (the green Algeria) The traditional party (the National Liberation Front - FLN ruling party) and independents, "he added. To anticipate any suspicion of fraud, a charge repeatedly since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1989, authorities invited 500 foreign observers, including 150 of the EU. Other observers of the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), UN and U.S. NGOs.