El Moudjahid (Algeria)
Un taux de participation record (Record Turnout)
Beyond expectations

With the incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika assured of victory in Algeria's presidential election, turnout was the one thing that mattered. According to the government paper El Moudjahid, the turnout in yesterday’s presidential election reached a whopping 74.11 percent. But some members of the opposition are crying foul.

La Kabylie (Algeria)
L'Algérie a voté massivement, la Kabylie aussi
Algeria votes en masse, Kabylia too

According to La Kabylie, an online publication from the Kabylia region and one that’s rather less in thrall to the government, that figure is complete rubbish.

La Kabylie describes the scenes in the streets on Election Day as being deserted; people interviewed ask what the point is of voting in the election. The article quotes statistics given by opposition groups putting the turnout at around 23 percent.

Perhaps the reality is somewhere in between the two extremes, but in any case La Kabylie’s conclusion is that the election was a farce – “poor Algeria,” it says at the end.


Gulf news (United Arab Emirates)
No change in Algeria

Like much of the world’s press, the Dubai paper Gulf News is pretty dismissive of the Algerian elections. An opinion piece by Marwan al Kabalan is entitled “No change in Algeria”. Kabalan says that Bouteflika used all the powers at his disposal to ensure victory in the election, and that it can’t really be called democratic just because he did allow a few weak opposition candidates to run.

Still, Kabalan says, it will be significant if the United States and France refuse to go along with Algeria’s claims that it is becoming ever more democratic.


The Guardian(UK)
French MPs lose piracy bill while out to lunch

The foreign pages of the Guardian are more interested in a different vote: the one in the French parliament over a bill to curb illegal downloading.

The paper delights in mocking the French MPs, who apparently failed to turn up in sufficient numbers due to a combination of Easter holidays… and lunchtime.

The opposition succeeded in blocking the bill by 21 votes to 15, raising the question as to why the UMP, which has 300 seats in the house, failed to rally enough people to vote for the bill.


Libération (France)
Le PS ruse et coince Hadopi à l’assemblée
The Socialist Party tricks Hadopi at the Assembly

In France, of course, the perception is a bit different. Left-wing paper Libération says it was an opposition ruse that won the vote on the Hadopi bill, as it is called. The paper describes how Socialist MPs hid behind the curtains in the National Assembly, lulling their opponents into a false sense of security, and then popped out at the last minute to vote the bill down.

The vote is in fact a major embarrassment for the ruling UMP party, which had considered to have won the vote in advance. The party have difficulty answering the question of why it failed to have such a high-profile bill passed.


L’Equipe (France)
N^o 20,000

France’s daily sports paper L’Equipe celebrates its 20,000th edition today. Last night it marked the event by selecting 40 of its most legendary front covers and projecting them onto the side of the national library in Paris.

Of course the most legendary of all is the one from 13 July 1998, after France won the football world cup. The cover was simple, and the headline: “For eternity”.