Algerians headed to poll stations on Thursday as parliamentary vote in Africa’s largest country kicked off.

Algerians head to poll stations on Thursday as parliamentary vote in Africa’s largest country kicks off, with the main challenge is set to bet between the ruling party and the Islamic partes.

The 48,000 polling stations across country opened at 8:00 am (0700 GMT), many under tight police surveillance.
State television showed live footage of voters pouring into a polling station as soon as the doors opened and jostling to be the first to cast their ballot.

The first results are due on Friday but a turnout estimate, the most anticipated figure in the election, is expected after polling stations close at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT).

Social discontent and deadly riots rattled Algeria in January 2011 but President Abdelaziz Bouteflika snuffed out the protests with a sprinkling of political reforms and pay rises.

The vote will see 44 parties -- 21 of them newly created -- battle for seats in an enlarged parliament of 462 lawmakers, in what Bouteflika has hailed as "the dawn of a new era".

But ever deeper voter disaffection ahead of an election that failed to produce new faces could prompt a huge chunk of the 21-million electorate to shun polling stations.
"I am talking to the youth, who need to take over because my generation has served its time," Bouteflika, 75, said on Tuesday.

His National Liberation Front (FLN), once the only party, has been steadily losing ground since pluralism was introduced in 1989. While it could yet win the most votes, it is expected to seek alliances to govern.

"I don't think any party can approach a majority alone," Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said recently.

The FLN, which has 136 seats in the outgoing assembly, currently is in a coalition with the National Rally for Democracy of Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and the Movement of Society for Peace, the main legal Islamist party.