Algeria’s Bouteflika wins landslide victory

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has won a fourth term in office with more than 81 percent of the vote.

On Friday, Interior Minister Tayeb Belaiz announced the result and said that Bouteflika’s main rival Ali Benflis received just over 12 percent of the ballot.

“The people have chosen freely, in a climate that was transparent and neutral,” media outlets quoted Belaiz as saying.

Official figures for turnout were about 52 percent, down from 75 percent for Bouteflika’s last win in 2009.

Benflis vowed to contest the results and criticized the election as marked by “fraud on a massive scale” after polls closed on Thursday.

Thursday’s voting was conducted largely peacefully. However, in two villages east of the capital Algiers, security forces fired tear gas and clashed with youths who tried to disrupt voting, local officials said.

Several ballot boxes were also burned in the area, which is a stronghold of an opposition party boycotting the election and a mostly ethnic Berber-speaking region that has been the scene of sporadic unrest.

Also on Wednesday, police broke up a protest rally by an anti-government movement called “Barakat,” which is demanding peaceful change.

Since suffering from a stroke last year, there have been concerns about Bouteflika’s ability to run the country.

The 77-year-old incumbent president had to vote from a wheelchair due to his poor health.

Since a stroke that put him in a Paris hospital for three months, Bouteflika has appeared only a few times in public, usually when speaking with visiting dignitaries. He did not campaign, though allies say he is well enough to govern.