Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has won a fourth term in office taking more than 81% of the vote, the interior minister has said.<\/p>\n
The 77-year-old leader, who suffered a stroke last year and rarely appears in public, cast his vote in a wheelchair in Thursday’s presidential election.<\/p>\n
He beat his five other opponents without personally campaigning.<\/p>\n
Turnout was said to be 51.7% of the country’s 23 million registered voters, down from the 75% in 2009.<\/p>\n
A coalition of Islamist and secular opposition parties had called for a boycott, describing the election as a sham and saying Mr Bouteflika was unfit to run because of his health problems.<\/p>\n
Three other presidential candidates pulled out of the race soon after Mr Bouteflika’s candidacy was announced, saying the result would be a foregone conclusion.<\/p>\n
His re-election bid also spawned a protest movement called Barakat, meaning “Enough”, which has been holding small demonstrations around the country.<\/p>\n
‘Transparent and neutral’<\/strong><\/p>\n Mr Bouteflika’s main challenger, Ali Benflis, received 12% of the vote, Interior Minister Tayeb Belaiz said.<\/p>\n “The people have chosen freely, in a climate that was transparent and neutral,” the AFP news agency quotes him as saying.<\/p>\n Mr Benflis, who ran Mr Bouteflika’s campaign in 1999, has rejected the result , alleging “serious irregularities”.<\/p>\n Correspondents say supporters of the president were already celebrating his victory on Thursday evening, with fireworks in the capital Algiers.<\/p>\n Mr Bouteflika took office in 1999 when Algeria was still caught up in a civil war between the military and Islamist militants, and has been credited by supporters for curbing the conflict and restoring some economic stability.<\/p>\n He scrapped constitutional rules in 2008 limiting him to two terms in office, and won elections the following year with 90% of the vote.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has won a fourth term in office taking more than 81% of the vote, the interior minister has said. The 77-year-old leader, who suffered a stroke last year and rarely appears in public, cast his vote in a wheelchair in Thursday’s presidential election. He beat his five other opponents without personally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":14330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,14],"class_list":["post-14329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}