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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Bouteflika-era PM elected president

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ALGIERS: A former Algerian prime minister who served under deposed leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president of the protest-wracked country after a vote marred by unrest and low turnout, results showed on Friday.


Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 74, took 58.15 per cent of the vote, trouncing his four fellow contenders without the need for a second-round runoff, electoral commission chairman Mohamed Charfi announced.


Like him, they all served under the two-decade rule of Bouteflika, 82, who resigned in the face of mass demonstrations in April.


The deeply unpopular election had been championed by the army as a way of restoring stability after almost 10 months of street protests.


But on polling day on Thursday, protesters defied a heavy police presence to hold a mass rally in the heart of the capital Algiers and smaller demonstrations in provincial cities.


All five candidates — who included another former prime minister, Ali Benflis, 75, and an ex-minister, Azzedine Mihoubi — were widely rejected by protesters as “children of the regime”.


VOTER ANGER


A record six in 10 Algerians abstained in the vote, Charfi said, the highest rate for a multi-party election since independence from France in 1962. Tens of thousands rallied in central Algiers, where police with water cannon and helicopters tried to disperse protesters.


On Friday, protesters prepared to take to the streets again in response to calls on social media under the slogan “Tebboune is not my president”.


Said, a 32 year-old engineer from Bouira, said he had made the 100 km journey to the capital to take part in Thursday’s demonstration.


“I spent the night here so I could demonstrate again today (Friday) and say we don’t recognise their election or their president.”


Pensioner Farida mocked the official figures from the electoral commission. “Someone added yeast to them to get them to rise,” she said.


On Thursday, reporters saw a group of protesters storming a


polling station in the capital, suspending voting there for about half an hour before police pushed them out again.


In the mountain region of Kabylie, home to much of the country’s Berber minority and historically opposed to the central government, protesters ransacked polling stations and clashed with police, residents said. — AFP


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