Islamic Fundamentalists’ Landslide Victory in Algeria Elections Contested

Election officials disclosed Friday that hundreds of appeals have been filed in last week’s parliamentary elections, a move that could strip Islamic fundamentalists of some of the seats they won.

The vast majority of the 341 appeals filed are against the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front, a landslide winner last week with 188 seats, 28 short of a majority in the 430-seat Parliament.

Reports said that as many as 145 results in the election had been thrown into doubt.

This could give new life to anti-fundamentalists, who marched through Algiers chanting pro-democracy slogans Thursday in one of the biggest demonstrations since independence from France in 1962. Crowd estimates ranged from 130,000 to 800,000.

In the challenges, the fundamentalists are accused of intimidation, tricking illiterate voters into casting ballots for their party and other irregularities.

If the appeals are upheld by the Constitutional Council, authorities may scrap the results from individual races.

The council has 10 days to rule on the appeals.

The Islamic party is running for most of the 199 seats to be decided in a runoff Jan. 16 and had been expected to win most of them.

The liberal Front for Socialist Forces finished a distant second last week with 25 seats. The National Liberation Front, which has ruled here as a one-party Marxist state for 29 years, ran a poor third with 15. Independents won three.