Algeria 10 May legislative elections: EU observers report.

"The EU observers would like to express sincere gratitude for the cooperation and assistance provided by the Algerian authorities during their mission, especially the Ministry of Interior and Local Authorities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice," the EU mission’s final report said.

However Jeune Afrique reports that the EU observers report said that the 10 May legislative elections were marked by "weakness" and "shortcomings", and their results reflected "in part a rejection of the citizen's expectations of the  political process..

The participation rate (43.14%) was higher than in 2007 (35.65%), but the EU observers insist in their report of sixty pages on "the high number of blank ballots / null ": nearly 1.7 million, or 18% of the vote. This "reflects in part a rejection of the political process as offered to citizens", it quotes the EU report as saying.

The head of the Elections Monitoring Committee, Mohamed Saddiki, is quoted by Echorouk as criticising the EU for delaying publication of its findings for three months and said that the report confirmed  the fears of Algerians that the elections were fraudulent.