Moussa Touati: 'President Bouteflika to be held accountable for flawed May 10th elections'

“If any hopes for the anchoring of democracy remained for the country, blatant election fraud have quashed them”, FNA Party leader Moussa Touati told Echorouk on Tuesday.

• Allegations of electoral malpractice have been made by certain opposition parties since the government announced on May 11 that the turnout was 43.36 per cent, with the two allied parties FLN (221 seats) and RND (70 seats) securing an overwhelming majority of the votes in the new legislative body.
• In a declaration to Echorouk, the FNA party leader accused the government of having perpetrated what he termed as “widespread fraud”. Similar allegations have been made by other defeated opposition parties over the past few days.
• Moussa Touati said they would challenge the results in the constitutional court to the hilt adding that the FNA along with 13 other parties, making up an opposition front, were intent on boycotting the new National Popular Assembly as a sign of protest at the flawed conduct of the recent legislative polls.
• The FNA party leader underscored that the results given by the Interior Ministry differed dramatically from those seen by the election observers at the various polling stations.
• He told Echorouk: “There was a process of fraud at a centralised level to alter the results that is putting the budding democratic process in jeopardy… and President Bouteflika himself should shoulder this heavy responsibility”, Moussa Touati affirmed.
• “Vote-rigging by the governmental apparatus was expected”, he said. “What seems to have baffled many Algerians about these latest elections was the scale and boldness of the fraud, both in the fabrication of the turnout figure and in the unfair distribution of the votes”, Moussa Touati argued.

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