President Abdelaziz
Bouteflika's... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third term, which is probably why Algerians are ready to dump him...
camp defended a package of cautious reforms initiated to contain revolutionary contagion, while the main Islamist alliance hoped to benefit from their counterparts' gains in the region.
As the three-week campaign wrapped up, the North African country's 21.6 million voters seemed underwhelmed by the choice of 44 parties.
Except for billboards plastered with ripped campaign posters, there were few signs in the streets of Algiers of the imminence of a vote Bouteflika has billed as "the dawn of a new era".
The country's top-selling daily Echorouk carried a front-page picture of a deserted street corner littered with campaign leaflets and this headline: "Everyone was there... except the citizens."
Algeria's leading French-language newspaper El Watan splashed a huge picture and headline on its front page, but it was on the French election, relegating the Algerian polls to page 5.
In the daily Liberte, Algeria's top cartoonist Dilem depicted one man asking another as they walked past the campaign posters for the May 10 vote: "So, who do you support, Sarko or Hollande?"