Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika swept a landslide victory. Algerians began voting in a suspenseful presidential election that pits Bouteflika against Ali Benflis, in an unprecedented democratic exercise. Photo by AFP.
Algeria's current president has won a landslide victory with a huge margin of victory, according to official results of Thursday's poll. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has swept 83 percent of votes cast. He was credited with calming down an Islamic insurgency, which has claimed some 100,000 lives in 12 years. Former Prime Minister Ali Benflis got just 8% of the votes but he is claiming "massive fraud" in the election and his supporters say he will appeal. Benflis and two other candidates said on Thursday that their information showed that no candidate had received more than 50 percent of the votes.