Northeastern Algeria's troubled Berber homeland, in crisis the past three years, is divided between advocates and boycotters of this Thursday's presidential election, being contested by a champion of their cause, Said Sadi.
Rallying around Sadi's candidacy are Berber elders who have called for a massive vote against the incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is detested in this poor, mountainous region known as Kabylie.
On the other hand, leading calls for a boycott of Thursday's six-way vote is Belaid Abrika, who also said his militants would resume street actions and try to obstruct voting here.
His faction of the Berber leadership, known as aarchs, broke out in favor of dialogue with the government, but decided on the boycott after talks with head of government Ahmed Ouyahia ended in failure in February.
Kabylie has been in open defiance of the government since the spring of 2001 when the death of a Berber youth sparked riots that left about 100 dead.
The president, who had not shown his face in Kabylie's main city Tizi Ouzou since 1999, held a rally here last week that sparked riots after a months-long lull in unrest.
Sadi, head of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, insists that the boycott call has little support. Several thousand people attended a rally he led at a Tizi Ouzou stadium last week with no reported incidents.
Hopes are that Kabylie voters will deliver a protest vote to punish Bouteflika, whom they hold responsible for the crisis in the region, observers said.
A major sticking point has been a Berber demand for its Tamazight language to be upgraded in status from a national to an official language, on the same level as Arabic.
In addition to recognition of their Berber identity, they want the government to devise a viable economic and social development plan for the region.
For legislative and local elections in May and October 2002, the aarchs were united in their call for a boycott, and turnout was next to nil in Kabylie.
They encouraged riots and the barricading of roads along which electoral materials were being ferried, and they even burned some ballot boxes.
Another force behind a Berber boycott is the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) led by veteran opposition figure Hocine Ait Ahmed, which says the election has been discredited by the sidelining of real opposition - for example, former foreign minister Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi was denied a place on the ballot by the Constitutional Court, which said he had not collected the necessary 75,000 signatures.
But observers think it unlikely that the FFS will join the aarch elders in favor of a boycott, since their relationship is not warm.
The elders have yet to forgive the FFS for taking part in the October 2002 local elections, which the party won in Kabylie.
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