20120416
AFP
Campaigning began on Sunday for elections in Algeria next month seen as a test of reforms designed to avert the kind of discontent that led to a string of revolutions elsewhere in the region.

Deadly riots in the north African country in January 2011 coincided with an uprising in neighbouring Tunisia that sparked the so-called Arab Spring which also ousted the rulers of Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika responded by promising reforms, allowing 23 new political parties and 73 new seats in the parliament.

The government also raised salaries and accelerated work on building more than a million homes, promised in 1999 when Bouteflika first assumed the presidency in the country, which is rich in oil and gas.

Algerians have taken to the streets and staged strikes or other actions to press demands for more secure employment, better employment prospects for youths, higher wages and more lodging.

Unemployment has fallen in recent years to around 11 percent, but it is much higher among youths in the country of 35 million people.

Turnout will be a key barometer in the May 10 vote, which Bouteflika called a "crucial phase" in the life of the nation, urging people to go to the polls.

The elections are "a decisive gamble which it is incumbent on us to win, because we have no other choice but to succeed", he said in a message to mark Algeria's Day of Knowledge on Monday.

Another key question will be how well Islamist candidates fare, notably after their counterparts won power in Tunisia and Egypt.

It is a delicate question in Algeria, where an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was prevented from winning polls in 1992 that it was set to win.

The military stepped in to halt the vote, plunging Algeria into a decade-long civil war that claimed some 200,000 lives. Bouteflika's reconciliation plan offering amnesty in return for the laying down of weapons finally restored peace to the country.

Last month the head of the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), Abdelaziz Belkhadem, predicted that Islamists spread across a half dozen parties would garner 35 percent of the vote in next month's polls.

Some Islamists, members of the Movement for Social Peace, have already served in key posts alongside the FLN and the National Rally for Democracy led by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia.

One party leader, Said Saadi of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, which has 19 seats in the outgoing parliament, has called for a boycott of the vote, saying Bouteflika's reforms are illusory.

But his traditional rival from the Berber homeland of Kabylie in the northeast, Hocine Ait Ahmed of the Front of Socialist Forces, has decided to take part in the polls after boycotting them for more than a decade.

After widespread allegations of fraud in previous elections, the government has pledged transparency for the May vote, which will be monitored by 500 foreign observers including 120 from the European Union.

Some observers were present Saturday when an independent election watchdog allotted television air time to the 44 parties fielding candidates for parliament's 462 seats.

The body will work in tandem with a national election commission of judges named by Bouteflika and charged with implementing the electoral law.

Campaigning runs until May 6.