"Voting or not will make no difference as Bouteflika will win anyway," political analyst Nacer Djabi told Reuters. "This is why a poor turnout is likely."

In Algeria's capital, a teeming city of white-washed French colonial buildings perched above the Mediterranean Sea, buses and lampposts are covered in posters urging voters to back Bouteflika. Rival candidates' posters are invisible.

Supporters say Bouteflika deserves the trust of the people for steering Algeria, an oil and gas producer across the water from the European Union, back to stability after a civil conflict in the 1990s that killed an estimated 150,000 people.

But a rump of rebels affiliated to al-Qaeda mount occasional attacks -- a low-level insurgency that security analysts say finds sympathy among some of Algeria's millions of unemployed young people who feel their government has let them down.

"I continue to regard the restoration of civil peace as a national priority, as long as hotbeds of tension and pockets of subversion survive," Bouteflika, running for a third term, said in his final campaign speech on Monday.

He has promised to spend $150 billion on development projects and create 3 million jobs, his remedy for an economy in which energy accounts for about 96 percent of exports but where other sectors have been choked by red tape and under-investment.

Bouteflika's ability to retain legitimacy in the eyes of Algeria's 34 million people matters to the outside world: his OPEC-member country has the world's 15th biggest oil reserves and accounts for 20 percent of the EU's gas imports.

European governments fear renewed conflict or economic collapse could unleash a flood of illegal migrants into the EU, while the United States needs the support of Bouteflika's government in its global fight against al-Qaeda.

Polling stations are scheduled to close at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT), but no results will be released until Friday when the Interior Ministry will announce the winner.

alarabiya.net