Posts Tagged ‘election’

Egyptians set to give Islamists biggest bloc in vote (Reuters)

[ at 2011-12-17 in: lions share]

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CAIRO (Reuters) ? Egyptians return to polling stations on Thursday in a phased election likely to give Islamists the biggest bloc in a parliament that will play a key role in drafting a new constitution after decades of autocratic rule.

The vote being staged over six weeks is Egypt’s first free polls after a series of rigged elections under Hosni Mubarak, who after almost 30 years in power was driven from office by a popular uprising in February.

The army, which took over after Mubarak was ousted, remains in charge until a presidential election in mid-2012, but parliament will have a popular mandate that the military will find difficult to ignore as it oversees the transition.

The ruling army council fuelled suspicions it wanted to hang on to power, even after a new president was elected, when its cabinet proposed inserting articles in the new constitution that would have shielded it from civilian scrutiny.

Parliament’s prime job will be appointing a 100-strong assembly to write a new constitution which will define the president’s powers and parliament’s clout in the new Egypt.

For ordinary Egyptians, the novelty is voting in an election where the outcome is not a foregone conclusion before even one vote is cast. Under Mubarak, his National Democratic Party (NDP) swept to routine victories in votes littered with abuses.

“It is the first time for me to know what an election is … I can choose the person that I want to represent me. The NDP used to control the country. Now our views will steer the parliament,” said 24-year-old Nesma Medhat, who was voting in a district of Cairo for the liberal Egyptian Bloc alliance.

Independent monitoring groups reported violations to voting rules, just as in the first round, including campaigning outside the polling stations. The army, which has sent troops to guard polling stations, said it would confront such practices.

An election committee has pledged to clamp down on abuses but says irregularities were not widespread enough to discredit the result. Official results are not expected until Saturday or Sunday but parties will give an indication of their performance before that since they have representatives watching the count.

TREND SEEN CONTINUING

Islamist-led party lists secured about two-thirds of votes in the first round of the election. However, the Islamists are a broad and divided camp, which analysts say gives liberals a chance to make their voices heard in the new assembly.

The biggest single bloc went to the alliance led by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party that won about 37 percent of the vote, with the hardline Salafi al-Nour Party listing coming a surprise second with 24 percent.

The liberal Egyptian Bloc and another liberal party, Wafd, together secured about 20 percent of votes for their lists.

The liberal camp has sought to revitalize its campaigning to draw out more support, although analysts do not expect any major changes to the overall trend in voting in the second round when once again turnout appeared to be high.

Long queues extended outside polling stations on Wednesday, the first day of the two days given to voting in each round.

“Voters casting their ballots in the second round will have been influenced by the results of voting in the first round of the election, but the order established in the first round will not change,” said Karin Maree, analyst for Egypt at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit.

But she said the Salafi al-Nour could lose a little ground and Egyptian Bloc’s “share of seats is likely to grow slightly as voters seek to limit the influence of Islamist parties.”

In the Minufiya district north of Cairo in the Nile Delta, one area where voting is taking place in this round, 32-year-old Zeinab Youssef said she was backing the Brotherhood’s party.

“I’m voting for an old, established party that will know how to write a constitution. The Brotherhood suffered a lot of injustice,” she said, referring to the decades when the Brotherhood was banned under Mubarak.

Voting for each stage is held on two days. This time voting was on Wednesday and Thursday in parts of Cairo not covered last time round, Ismailiya and Suez to the east of the capital, Aswan and Sohag to the south, and Nile Delta regions in the north.

(Additional reporting by Shaimaa Fayed; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/wl_nm/us_egypt_election

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Observers: Congo election lacks credibility

[ at 2011-12-12 in: lions share]

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Armed Congolese police officers patrol the streets of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011. Security forces in Congo’s capital prowled opposition neighborhoods Saturday rounding up young men, who were seen being dragged out of their homes and shoved into waiting cars, a day after the government announced that the country’s opposition leader had lost the disputed presidential election. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Armed Congolese police officers patrol the streets of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011. Security forces in Congo’s capital prowled opposition neighborhoods Saturday rounding up young men, who were seen being dragged out of their homes and shoved into waiting cars, a day after the government announced that the country’s opposition leader had lost the disputed presidential election. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Congolese soldiers from the Presidential Guard patrol the streets of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011. Security forces in Congo’s capital prowled opposition neighborhoods Saturday rounding up young men, who were seen being dragged out of their homes and shoved into waiting cars, a day after the government announced that the country’s opposition leader had lost the disputed presidential election. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) ? The results from Congo’s election which handed victory to the country’s president of 10 years lack credibility, said one of the major observation missions.

The Atlanta-based Carter Center founded by former President Jimmy Carter had earlier said that the vote was marred by technical shortcomings, but that there was not evidence of systematic fraud. In a statement released late Saturday, the Carter Center observers showed evidence of possible vote tampering, as well as of vote inflation in regions of the country favorable to the incumbent President Joseph Kabila, accompanied by vote suppression in areas known to be bastions of support for the opposition.

Kabila was declared the winner with 49 percent of vote. Opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who finished second with 32 percent, said he rejects the results and considers himself the country’s elected leader. In countries throughout Europe, Tshisekedi’s supporters took to the streets, including in London, where police confirmed they have arrested 143 protesters.

Detailed province-by-province results show a pattern of “impossibly high” rates of voter turnout in places known to be strongholds of support for the 40-year-old Kabila, said a statement released by the Carter Center.

Although voter turnout throughout the country was less than 59 percent overall, in several constituencies in Katanga province turnout was 99 to 100 percent, and all, or nearly all, of the votes were cast for Kabila. Katanga was expected to vote in large numbers for Kabila because it is where his father is from. But David Pottie, one of the senior observers with the Carter Center, said it is impossible to have 100 percent voter turnout in a region where less than 2 percent of the roads are paved, and equally improbably for all the votes to go to Kabila, when there were 11 candidates on the ballot.

At the same time that authorities were vigilant in counting ballots in Katanga, they showed little interest in compiling results in opposition strongholds like the capital.

Even though Kinshasa has the best roads in the country and the best telephone network, results from more than 2,000 of the city’s 10,000 polling stations were simply lost in the tabulation process, representing 350,000 votes. The reason was never explained by election officials, and could be a result of poor organization or logistical shortcomings.

After last Monday’s vote, millions of ballots were brought on the backs of trucks and dumped outside warehouses. Some of the sacks in which the ballots were sealed split open, and ballots fell in the mud. The bags holding sensitive voting material were stockpiled outside, exposed to the elements, as poll workers struggled to enter the data.

Observers said that after a rain storm, result forms were found hanging on sticks to dry.

In its statement, the Carter Center says that it is not clear if these irregularities were widespread enough to have changed the race’s outcome, as Tshisekedi claims. His party has insisted that Tshisekedi, not Kabila, won the election.

“This assessment does not propose that the final order of candidates is necessarily different than announced by (the election commission), only that the results process is not credible,” the statement said.

Congo is holding only its second democratic vote in its 51-year history. It’s the first free election that is being organized by the government, following the 2006 vote which was handled by the United Nations.

Although a few flights took off, most international airlines continued to suspend their flights to Congo, as violence was feared. Over the weekend, the capital’s two four-star hotels were unable to provide room service, because their employees could not get to work, due to unrest. Bus operators have pulled their fleets off the highways after angry opposition supporters barricaded streets, set tires on fire and torched over a dozen cars.

___

Associated Press Writer Cassandra Vinograd contributed to this report from London.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-11-AF-Congo-Election/id-e7c2fd0609b045ea976372344d20892b

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Arizona immigration crackdown leader trails in recall (Reuters)

[ at 2011-11-11 in: lions share]

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PHOENIX (Reuters) ? A powerful Republican state Senate leader who championed Arizona’s controversial crackdown on illegal immigrants appeared headed for early removal from office on Tuesday in a historic recall election, returns showed.

With all precincts reporting, state Senate President Russell Pearce was trailing his chief challenger, Republican newcomer and charter school administrator Jerry Lewis, by 7 percentage points, 45.4 percent to 52.4 percent.

Election officials said the final outcome remained uncertain due to an unknown number of early votes and provisional ballots that remained to be tabulated.

Still, Pearce all but conceded his ouster in remarks to supporters late on Tuesday, saying, “It doesn’t look like the numbers are going my direction in this, and I’m OK with that.”

“I intend to spend a little time with my God, my wife and my family and reassess where we need to go,” he added.

Lewis declared victory in what he called a “historic upset” over a prominent incumbent with long list of influential backers and a 3-to-1 fund-raising advantage.

The race in the conservative Phoenix suburb of Mesa is believed to be the first recall election ever mounted against a state legislator in Arizona.

The recall movement was galvanized mainly by Pearce’s role as chief architect of a state law that required police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain and suspect is in the country illegally.

Enactment of the measure, signed by Governor Jan Brewer in April 2010, ignited a furor among Latino and civil rights activists, including calls for an economic boycott of Arizona, and sparked a court challenge by the Obama administration.

A federal judge has thrown out key provisions of the law, including the mandate for police checks of immigration status, and the case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pearce waged an all-out battle to retain his seat in a heavily Republican district of about 70,000 registered voters.

The 64-year-old politician, first elected to the state legislature in 2000, vehemently defended his get-tough stance on illegal immigrants flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border, a phenomenon he called “a national crisis.”

Pearce also broadened his platform to include his efforts in other areas such as balancing the state budget.

He branded his political opponents as “far left liberals” and labor union activists, and chastised the recall election coming when he has just one year left in his current term.

Lewis, 55, has maintained that residents could not afford to wait until the next election to replace a man who he said has tarnished Arizona’s image.

The stage for the recall race was set in July when Brewer, a strong supporter of Pearce, approved the mid-term election challenge after a citizen’s group turned in enough signatures to put it on the ballot.

Lewis said the Southwestern state badly needs someone who can tackle immigration and other issues with an approach free of “fear-mongering and political rhetoric,” and said Arizona should work with the federal government on a comprehensive immigration solution, not battle the government in court.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Cynthia Johnston)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111109/pl_nm/us_election_arizona_recall

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Tunisians begin voting in first “Arab Spring” vote (Reuters)

[ at 2011-10-24 in: lions share]

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TUNIS (Reuters) ? Tunisians began voting on Sunday in the first election of the “Arab Spring” uprisings, and were expected to hand a share of power to Islamists for the first time.

The election, the first free vote in Tunisia’s history, will set a standard for other Arab countries where uprisings have triggered political change or governments have tried to rush reforms to stave off unrest.

Tunisia set the “Arab Spring” in motion 10 months ago, when mass protests over poverty, unemployment and government oppression forced President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia.

Sunday’s vote is for an assembly that will draft a new constitution to replace the one Ben Ali manipulated to entrench his power. It will also appoint an interim government and set elections for a new president and parliament.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) and close at 7 p.m.

The mother of Mohamed Bouazizi, the young man whose self-immolation last December triggered the Tunisian revolt, said the election was a victory for dignity and freedom.

“Now I am happy that my son’s death has given the chance to get beyond fear and injustice,” Manoubia Bouazizi told Reuters. “I’m an optimist, I wish success for my country.

The Islamist Ennahda party, banned under Ben Ali who is now in exile in Saudi Arabia, is expected to gain the biggest share of votes. But it will probably not win enough to give it a majority in the assembly and will seek to lead a coalition.

The North African country’s elite fear the rise of Ennahda puts their secular values under threat.

Ennahda has been at pains to assuage the concerns of secularists and Western powers, fielding several women candidates including one who does not wear the hijab, or Muslim headscarf, and promising not to undermine women’s freedoms.

Fundamentalist Islamists known as Salafists have attacked a cinema and a TV station in recent months over artistic material deemed blasphemous. Ennahda says they have nothing to do with them, but liberals do not believe them.

CONTRADICTIONS

Observers says Ennahda’s intentions are not clear. Its election campaign has scrupulously avoided offering policy details that mark it out as much different from its rivals.

At a final election rally on Friday, Suad Abdel-Rahim, the female candidate who does not wear a veil, said Ennahda would protect women’s gains.

But illustrating the party’s contradictions, many of the books on sale on the fringes of the rally were by Salafist writers who believe women should be segregated from men in public and that elections are un-Islamic.

An Ennahda victory would be the first such success in the Arab world since Hamas won a 2006 Palestinian vote. Islamists won a 1991 Algerian election the army annulled, provoking years of bloody conflict.

Ennahda’s fortunes could have a bearing on Egyptian elections set for next month in which the Muslim Brotherhood, an ideological ally, also hopes to emerge strongest.

Libya hopes to hold elections next year after a protest movement that transformed into an armed rebellion with NATO backing managed to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Unresolved violent conflict continues in Syria and Yemen, and many other governments have begun reforms to avoid civil unrest.

With so much at stake, there are concerns that even the smallest doubt over the legitimacy of the Tunisian vote could bring supporters of rival parties onto the streets.

The government says 40,000 police and soldiers are being deployed to prevent any protests escalating into violence. Shopkeepers say people have been stockpiling milk and bottled water in case unrest disrupts supplies.

(Writing by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Rosalind Russell and Jon Boyle)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111023/wl_nm/us_tunisia_election

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