Algeria’s local elections record low turnout

ALGIERS, Algeria

Algeria’s early local elections recorded low voter turnout, according to the electoral commission on Sunday.

Mohamed Charfi, the head of the Independent National Election Authority, said voter turnout reached 35.9% in the municipal elections and 34.3% in the provincial polls.

He, however, said that the turnout in the local polls was higher than the parliamentary elections in June, which recorded 30.2%.

Algerian authorities have not released any official results from the polls.

Unofficial estimates circulated on social media, however, showed that the former ruling National Liberation Front was leading the vote in a number of provinces.

In the last parliamentary elections, the National Liberation Front came first with 98 seats of the 407-member People’s National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.

A total of 1,158 candidates vied in Saturday’s local elections for 58 provincial council seats with 877 representing party lists and 281 running as independent candidates.

Meanwhile, 4,860 party-list candidates and 988 independent candidates competed for seats in 1,541 municipalities.

The polls were the second in which Algeria has adopted the open list system, which allows voters to arrange the candidates within the same list according to his/her preference, unlike the closed list, which forces voters to choose the list based on the arrangement set by the party.

* Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara