Ex-rulers win Algeria polls

Zerhouni told a news conference the ruling National Democratic Rally (RND) came second with 48 seats, sharply down from 156 in the last chamber.

Widespread voter apathy, evident throughout a dull electoral campaign, meant that more than half the 18 million registered voters did not bother to cast their ballot.

Turnout at 47.49 per cent was a record low since multi-party elections were introduced in 1990 in the vast, energy-rich North African country which has been rocked by a brutal Islamic insurgency for a decade in which more than 100,000 people have died.

The election was overshadowed by violence, with Islamic rebels slaughtering 25 civilians hours before the vote, the latest in a series of massacres in the undeclared civil war.

Thursday’s vote was the second since Islamic extremist groups launched their uprising in 1992 following the cancellation of a general election about to be won by the Islamic Salvation Front, a party now banned. Four Opposition parties, including the leading Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), boycotted the vote. So did ethnic Berbers living in the volatile Kabylie region, scene of large anti-government protests for the past year.

The FLN, bringing in young technocrats and women, held 62 seats in the outgoing 381-strong chamber. It is the rump of the revolutionary guerrilla movement that led the independence war against France from 1954 to 1962.

The high absention rate, with practically a no-show in Kabylie, made President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s claims that Algeria was on the road to peaceful change sound hollow, diplomats said.

‘‘Few Algerians believe the system, seen as irremediably corrupt, can be changed from within or through elections always suspected of being fraudulent,’’ a European diplomat said.