Algerian presidential election, 2004

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Algerian presidential election, 2004
Flag of Algeria.svg
  1999 8 April 2004 2009  
  Bouteflika (Algiers, Feb 2006).jpeg Ali Benflis 2014 (cropped).jpg
Nominee Abdelaziz Bouteflika Ali Benflis
Party RND FLN
Popular vote8,651,723653,951
Percentage85.0%6.42%

President before election

Abdelaziz Bouteflika
FLN

Elected President

Abdelaziz Bouteflika
FLN

Algeria emb (1976).svg
This article is part of a series on the
politics and government of
Algeria

Presidential elections were held in Algeria on 8 April 2004. [1] Incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected with 85% of the vote.

Algeria country in North Africa

Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The capital and most populous city is Algiers, located in the far north of the country on the Mediterranean coast. With an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, and the largest in Africa. Algeria is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia, to the east by Libya, to the west by Morocco, to the southwest by the Western Saharan territory, Mauritania, and Mali, to the southeast by Niger, and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1,541 communes (counties). It has the highest Human development index of all non-island African countries.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika President of Algeria

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, GColIH is an Algerian politician who has been the fifth President of Algeria since 1999. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1963 to 1979. As President, he presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002, and he ended emergency rule in February 2011 amidst regional unrest. He was the president of the United Nations General Assembly for a term in 1974.

Contents

Candidates

Ali Benflis Algerian politician

Ali Benflis is an Algerian politician who was Head of Government of Algeria from 2000 to 2003. In 2003, he became the general secretary of the National Liberation Front party. Benflis was a candidate in the 2004 presidential election, but the poll resulted in the re-election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Benflis ran yet again as an independent candidate in the 2014 Algerian presidential elections held on 17 April 2014. As a result, Abdelaziz Bouteflika was reelected as president with 81.53% of the votes, with Benflis ending as runner-up with 12.18%.

National Liberation Front (Algeria) political party in Algeria

The National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was the principal nationalist movement during the Algerian War and the sole legal and the ruling political party of the Algerian state until other parties were legalised in 1989.

Conduct

There were about 130 official foreign observers in Algeria for these elections, which followed more than a decade of civil conflict. Delegations of observers came from the Arab League, the African Union, the United Nations, the European Parliament and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Algerian Civil War 1991-2002 civil war in Algeria

The Algerian Civil War was an armed conflict between the Algerian Government and various Islamic rebel groups which began in 1991 following a coup negating an Islamist electoral victory. The war began slowly as it first appeared the government had successfully crushed the Islamist movement, but armed groups emerged to fight jihad and by 1994, violence had reached such a level that it appeared the government might not be able to withstand it. By 1996–7 however it became clear that the violence and predation of the Islamists had lost its popular support, although fighting continued for several years after.

Arab League organisation of Arab states

The Arab League, formally the League of Arab States, is a regional organization of Arab states in and around North Africa, the Horn of Africa and Arabia. It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members, but Syria's participation has been suspended since November 2011, as a consequence of government repression during the Syrian Civil War.

African Union Supranational union

The African Union (AU) is a continental union consisting of 55 member states located on the continent of Africa, with exception of various territories of European possessions located in Africa. The bloc was founded on 26 May 2001 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and launched on 9 July 2002 in South Africa. The intention of the AU is to replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), established on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa by 32 signatory governments. The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states. The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa.

An OSCE spokesman said its small election monitoring team observed no obvious electoral fraud, and that the election, while not perfect, was excellent by regional standards and that it is "pretty clear" the results reflected the views of the Algerian people.

Election monitoring is the observation of an election by one or more independent parties, typically from another country or a non-governmental organization (NGO), primarily to assess the conduct of an election process on the basis of national legislation and international election standards. There are national and international election observers. Monitors do not directly prevent electoral fraud, but rather record and report such instances. Election observation increasingly looks at the entire electoral process over a longer period of time, rather than at election-day proceedings only. The legitimacy of an election can be affected by the criticism of monitors, provided that they are themselves seen as unbiased. A notable individual is often appointed honorary leader of a monitoring organization in an effort to enhance its own legitimacy.

Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election fraud, election manipulation or vote rigging, is illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of the favored candidate, depressing the vote share of the rival candidates, or both. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country.

However, the Kabyle population boycotted the elections following the Arouch directives, only 10% (officially) of them went to vote.

Results

CandidatePartyVotes%
Abdelaziz Bouteflika National Rally for Democracy 8,651,72385.0
Ali Benflis National Liberation Front 653,9516.4
Abdallah Djaballah Movement for National Reform 511,5265.0
Said Sadi Rally for Culture and Democracy 197,1111.9
Louisa Hanoune Workers' Party 101,6301.0
Ali Fawzi Rebaine Ahd 54 63,7610.6
Invalid/blank votes329,075
Total10,508,777100
Registered voters/turnout18,097,25558.1
Source: IFES

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Elections in Algeria

Algeria elects on national level a head of state - the president - and a legislature. The president is elected for a five-year term by the people. People's National Assembly has 462 members, elected for a five-year term in multi-seat constituencies by proportional representation. Eight seats in the national assembly are reserved for Algerians abroad. The Council of the Nation has 144 members, 96 members elected by communal councils and 48 members appointed by the president. Algeriawesh alors has a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which no one party often has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments. According to a US Embassy cable, the 2009 presidential elections were "carefully choreographed and heavily controlled", with the official turnout figure "exaggerated" by at least 45%.

1995 Algerian presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Algeria on 16 November 1995, in the midst of the Algerian Civil War. The result was a victory for Liamine Zeroual, head of the High Council of State at the time, who won 61% of the vote. The Armed Islamic Group of Algeria threatened to kill anyone who voted, with the slogan "one vote, one bullet", but (official) voter turnout was 74.9%.

Constitution of Algeria supreme law of Algeria

An Algerian Constitution was first adopted by a referendum in 1963, following the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62); originally, it was to be drafted by a constitutional assembly led by Ferhat Abbas, but this body was sidelined by Algeria's first President, Ahmed Ben Bella. In its 1963 form, the constitution declared Algeria a one-party state ruled by the former resistance movement, the National Liberation Front (FLN). This constitution was suspended by the military coup d'état of 1965. After years of ruling by executive fiat as leader of the Revolutionary Council, Houari Boumédienne issued a second constitution in 1976, emphasizing the importance of socialism and - formally - restoring political institutions to their primacy over the military establishment.

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2014 Algerian presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Algeria on 17 April 2014. Incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected with 82% of the vote. Issues in the campaign included a desire for domestic stability after the bloody civil war of the 1990s, the state of the economy, the frail health of the 15 year incumbent and 77-year-old president whose speech was "slurred and inaudible" in his only public outing during the campaign, and the less-than-wholehearted support given the president by normally united and discrete ruling class.

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