ALGIERS, May 30: Algerians trickled out to vote Thursday in parliamentary elections as militant ethnic Berbers blocked polling and clashed with security forces in their northeastern Kabylie homeland.
The Berbers called for a boycott of the polls to protest economic and cultural marginalisation and to express their anger at perceived official corruption.
Their Kabylie homeland has been a cauldron of discontent since a security forces crackdown last year in which dozens of Berbers were killed, and their malaise has galvanized dissent elsewhere in the country, spawning frequent riots and strikes.
However, Kabylie represents only about 30 seats out of the 389 in the new assembly, which will have a five-year mandate and be elected under proportional representation.
Elsewhere in the north African country polling proceeded calmly despite the reported massacre overnight Wednesday of 23 nomads west of the Algerian capital by suspected Islamic extremists.
Widespread apathy has been evident among Algeria’s 18 million voters ahead of the polls during a time of continuing civil war and severe economic hardship, notably among the Berbers, who make up about one-fifth of the country’s population of some 31 million.
In the Kabylie capital Tizi Ouzou clashes between protesters and security forces broke out early in the morning and were still going on at midday, an AFP correspondent reported.
Riot police had used teargas to disperse demonstrators outside the city theatre, once the headquarters of the influential tribal leaders in the region, who have spearheaded the Berbers’ protest movement, but now occupied by police.
Tizi Ouzou was otherwise deserted, with offices and most businesses closed in observance of a strike called by the tribal leaders in protest over the elections, which they have rejected as a sham.
Clashes were also reported in Kabylie’s largest city Bejaia and other towns and villages.
In Algiers, uniformed police patrolled the streets, while plainclothes colleagues guarded the entrances to polling stations.
The police presence has been heavy in the capital for several days amid fears of attacks by armed Islamic extremist groups.
Just hours before some 38,000 polling stations opened around the country, 23 nomads were burnt to death near the town of Chlef, in an area 200 kilometers west of Algiers where the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) is known to operate, officials said.
Attacks by the GIA and another hardline Islamic group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), have been on the rise since February, when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika set the date for legislative elections, the first since he took power in 1999.
Both extremist groups are opposed to Algeria’s secular government and have rejected a reconciliation policy proposed by Bouteflika to end their insurgency, which has claimed some 150,000 lives since 1992.—AFP