CLOSE allies of President Liamine Zeroual swept to victory yesterday in Algeria's new parliament after the first general election in more than five years of bloodshed and confrontation between the government and Muslim fundamentalist rebels.
The result, ensuring the president's paramount powers should be largely unchallenged in parliament, brought cries of foul play from parties trailing the dominant National Democratic Rally (RND). They said they would lodge official protests.
The authorities see the vote - with a turnout of 65.49 per cent nationally but less than 40 per cent in the capital - as a key step towards ending the violence in which about 60,000 people have died, and laying the foundation for building a multiparty democracy. But the charges of cheating suggested some politicians would find this hard to accept.
"It's premature to say the violence will end. We can only hope so," said one western diplomat.
The Interior Minister Mr Mustapha Benmansour, announcing the results at an Algiers news conference, said: "This historic vote, which was not marred by any distortion, is an enormous progress and a great victory dedicated to the nation and future generations to build and strengthen democracy and the state of law."
Mr Benmansour said the National Democratic Rally formed only two months ago, took 155 seats in the 380 seat assembly. The party termed its victory a decisive response by the Algerian people" to conspiracies and terrorism".
It eclipsed the Islam oriented Movement of a Peaceful Society (MPS) which won 69 seats and whose leader, Mr Mahfoud Nahnah, said: "We will file protests to the Constitutional Council."
That position was echoed by the third placed National Liberation Front (FLN), which as the former sole ruling party had run the state for nearly three decades from independence from France in 1962 up to reforms forced after riots in October 1988. "These figures do not reflect the truth," the party said of its 64 seat and 1.4 million vote support out of more than 10 million ballots cast on Thursday.
The secular Socialist Forces Front (FFS) spokesman, Mr Seddik Debaili said: "We do not recognise this poll and reject the results. The election was massively rigged."
The FFS, like its anti Islamist rival the Rally for Culture and Democracy of Mr Said Saad, won 19 seats.
The results give Mr Zeroual a wide choice to select a prime minister from among his supporters, including the outgoing prime minister, Mr Ahmed Ouyabia, who was elected on the RND ticket.
Diplomats said it was too early to say whether the vote would cut the violence which erupted after the Algerian authorities in January 1992 scrapped a general election dominated by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
The FIS is outlawed and new laws bar the use of Islam as a political platform, ensuring no other party could provide an alternative. The FIS from abroad called for a boycott of the vote.
The authorities took no chances on security, deploying an estimated 200,000 security forces to guard the 16.7 million electorate in Africa's second largest country.
Bombs bit the capital only last weekend and hundreds of people were massacred in raids this year on isolated villages.
The lowest turnout was in the overcrowded capital - under 44 per cent - where besides violence, residents have been especially hard hit by economic reforms, which brought praise: overseas but caused hardship.