(Paul Schemm/ Associated Press ) - Workers at a polling station count ballots at a polling station in the Bab el-Oued neighborhood, Algiers, Thursday, May 10, 2012. As parliamentary elections unfolded across Algeria on Thursday, voting was light for much of day in the capital, despite these contests being billed the freest in 20 years.
ALGIERS, Algeria — Islamists suffered a surprising defeat in Algeria’s parliamentary elections, bucking a trend that saw them gain power across North Africa after Arab Spring uprisings.
The three party Islamist “Green Alliance” claimed Friday the results were rigged to keep them out of power in a country that has experienced decades of violence between radical Islamist groups and security forces.
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The Green Alliance was widely expected to do well, but instead it was the pro-government National Liberation Front that has ruled the country for much of its history since independence from France that dominated the election.
The FLN, as it is known by its French initials, took 220 seats out of 462, while a sister party, also packed with government figures, took another 68 seats, giving the two a comfortable majority.
The Islamist alliance, which took just 48 seats, less than in the last election, said the results differed dramatically what their election observers had witnessed in polling stations.
“We are surprise by these results, which are illogical, unreasonable and unacceptable,” said a visibly angry Abou Djara Soltani, the head of the largest party in the alliance, attributing the results to “those who would like to return to a single party rule.”
Soltani told journalists that his alliance would discuss whether they would pull out of parliament, but said their most likely move was to attempt to ally with the smattering of other leftist and liberal parties in the opposition.
“These results will send the Algerian spring backwards,” he added.
Algeria was largely spared the pro-democracy demonstrations that swept North Africa and the Middle East over the past year, cushioned by its huge wealth of oil and natural gas, and a population still traumatized by the violence that followed a military coup in 1991 when another Islamist party nearly won elections.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced reforms in 2011, however, and said the new parliament would be involved in rewriting the constitution.
In the runup to elections, the government portrayed the parliamentary contests as “Algeria’s Spring” and invited in 500 international observers, promising these would be the freest polls in 20 years.
For the Islamists, however, the overwhelming victory for the government parties smacked of fraud, something that has characterized many past elections.
“Of course there was fraud,” said Abderrazzak Mukri, the alliance’s campaign manager. He said initial tabulations from voting stations Thursday night had put the Islamist party as a close second to the FLN.
Interior Minister Dahu Ould Kablia, who announced the results Friday, dismissed any possibilities of fraud and described the elections as free, transparent and fair.
“The was no fraud,” he said at the press conference. “If anyone has proof, they have 10 days to present it.”
In the 1991 elections that were canceled, the FLN took only a handful of seats compared to a crushing victory of the Islamist Salvation Front, which was later banned.
