التاريخ : الخميس 05 يوليو 2007 . القسم :

MSP Garners 52 Seats in Algerian Legislative Elections

Algeria"s Movement for the Society of Peace (MSP) garnered 52 seats, 13.36 %, out of 389 seat parliament in the legislative elections, official results reported on Friday.

This figure raises the movement"s quota in this parliament, after it had 39 seats in 2002 parliament. It is ranked three among the winning political powers in the elections.

For his part, Abou Garra Sultani, leader of the Movement for the Society of Peace, considered this win a proof that the Algerians want to adopt the slogan of peaceful change which the movement raised in its election campaign. This proves also that the Algerian people want moderate Islamists, according to him.

Sultani attributed, in a statement to Ikhwanweb, the low turnout to state of mistrust of some Algerians towards the political practice and politicians.

This mistrust is natural due to the current circumstances facing the Algerian political arena, he noted .

Sultani added MSP" priorities during the coming period will focus on fighting the widespread phenomenon of financial and administrative corruption in Algeria.

Democratic National Rally (RND) and the Society of Peace Movement (MSP) together clinched 249 of the 389 seats in the National People’s Assembly, said Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni.

The nationalist FLN claimed 136 seats, the liberal RND took 61 seats, and the Islamist-oriented MSP won 52 seats, said Zerhouni as he declared the results live on national television.
This means that The National Liberation Front garnered 136 seats, 63 seats less than 2002 elections, while the Democratic National Rally garnered 61 seats in addition to the seats won by MSP, the third party in the presidential coalition.

The presidential coalition garnered 249 seats, 35 seats less than 2002 parliament (284 seats). The loss would have been bigger but for MSP"s increase in seats in comparison to the previous parliament.

Various independents collected 33 seats, while the radical left Workers’ Party, led by Louiza Hannoune, one of Algeria’s most popular politicians, won 26 seats in Thursday’s vote, becoming the leading opposition group.

Smaller parties shared the remaining seats, including the secular Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) with 19 seats, and the environmental National Movement for Nature and Development with seven.

Figures, Indications
The turnout in these elections was less than the previous elections . About 6.6 millions voters, 36.5 %, of the 18700 thousand registered voters attended these elections while 46 % of the registered voters voted in the previous elections. Invalid ballot papers in these elections are 961 thousand, 14.5 % ; this means that the valid ballots are only 35.5 % of the registered voters.

Algeria is witnessing a state of political instability due to fallouts of the civil war, including groups of political violence, like the Salafist group for call and combat which changed its name to Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in Maghreb. It carried bombings in the hub of the Algerian capital last April, 11, killing 33 persons and injuring dozens, the first bombings of such a kind since the 1990s, raising fears over the return of violence to the country.

The country is facing also a state of economic deterioration that led to many social problems, the most serious of which is the rise unemployment among young men under 30 to 75 %. There is also the state of political deadlock, triggering many demands for change by many political movements topped by the Movement for the Society of Peace whose election slogan was " peaceful change".