Algeria's elections not credible: monitoring commission

Officials start counting the votes in Algiers in May 2012. By Farouk Batiche (AFP/File)

ALGIERS (AFP) - Algeria's May 10 elections were neither credible nor transparent, a multi-party national monitoring commission said Saturday.

"The polls of May 10, 2012 were marred by numerous excesses and breaches from the beginning of the operation to the end, which have tarnished its probity and transparence," said the conclusion of the report read out by Mohamed Seddiki, president of the National Elections Monitoring Commission.

"The commission finds that the elections have lost their credibility," added the 30-page report.

Seddiki however fell short of using the word "fraud" to describe the polls, saying rather that it was simply "not credible."

The monitoring commission is made up of representatives from 44 political parties which contested the elections and it compiled the report based on irregularities that were recorded from the time when the elections were called to the announcement of the results.

Some 35 members of the commission have signed off on the final report, while two -- from the winning party and its main ally -- have refused to do so. Four representatives were absent while the remaining three abstained.

It marks the first time since 1989 that the head of the commission was not appointed by the authorities.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's National Liberation Front took 208 of the enlarged national assembly's 462 seats in the election, followed by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia's National Rally for Democracy with 68 lawmakers.

The moderate Islamist Green Algeria Alliance, which predicted victory ahead of the vote, won only 49 seats.