Algeria

In Algeria, more than 20 million registered voters had a chance to elect their president. The incumbent, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, ruling since 1999, was standing for a third term in office. His party amended the constitution prior to the election campaign to remove a two-term limit.

He was challenged by:

• Labour Party leader Louisa Hanoune, the only woman in the race
• the nationalist, Moussa Tauti of the Algerian National Front
• the moderate Islamist, Mohammed Said of the Party For Liberty and Justice
• nationalist and second-time contestant Fawzi Rebein of the AHD-54 (who won only 0.63 percent of the vote in 2004)
• Jahid Youmsi of El Islah.

The opposition parties had heavily criticised the inequitable allocation of campaign resources and the ruling party's use of the media, but a call for a boycott launched by El Islah leader Youmsi had been ignored.

There were a total of 47,150 polling stations, of which 46,577 were in fixed locations, 330 are in diplomatic missions outside the country, the others were mobile stations in rural areas to spare voters the trouble of commuting to towns.

The election was monitored by 200 international observers, including 85 from the Arab League and 100 from the African Union. Nearly 1,000 journalists, both local and international, had been accredited to cover the event.

Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni told the international media, according to the official results President Bouteflika won 90.24% of the votes in the election.Around 74% of the reistered voters participated in the presidential poll.

Louisa Hanoune of the Trotskyist Workers' Party won 4.22% of the votes, Moussa Touati of the Algerian National Front came third with 2.31%.