Algerians voted on Thursday in an election President Abdelaziz Bouteflika needs to win convincingly to show he can re-connect with disillusioned voters and snuff out a lingering Islamist insurgency.

Bouteflika, a 72-year-old veteran of Algeria’s war for independence from France, is expected to win by a big margin but if voters stay away from the polls that could boost opponents — including Islamists — who say the vote is a charade.

“Abstentions, the one and only adversary of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, could upset all the calculations for the election,” Le Soir D’Algerie newspaper wrote in its Thursday edition.

Algerian lawmakers, most of them loyal to Bouteflika, cleared the way for him to stand for re-election last year by abolishing constitutional term limits. Critics said that could allow him to serve as president-for-life.

The five other candidates in the race present no real challenge, and several opposition figures not taking part have urged their supporters either to put blank voting slips in the ballot box or stay at home.

About an hour after voting started in the capital, a teeming city of white-washed French colonial buildings perched above the Mediterranean Sea, only a trickle of voters were making their way to central polling stations.

Election officials said they expected numbers to pick up later. Algerian television showed footage of long queues outside polling stations elsewhere, along with pre-recorded appeals for people to go out and vote.

“I voted today for Bouteflika because I think he needs to continue his programme. We need peace and economic growth to create jobs,” said industrial worker Abdelwahab Ziani, 42, as he cast his ballot in central Algiers.

LOW-LEVEL INSURGENCY

Supporters say Bouteflika deserves credit 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 feeds off anger among Algeria’s millions of unemployed young people who feel their government has let them down.

Worried that the rebels may try to mount an attack to coincide with the vote, police set up extra road blocks around the capital, adding to already formidable security measures.

A smiling Bouteflika, accompanied by his young nephew, cast his ballot at a polling station in the upmarket El Biar district of Algiers, then left without speaking to reporters.

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.