What will be the test of legitimacy for Afghanistan’s elections?
No-one is using the age-old electoral mantra "free and fair".
It is hard to find anyone who expects Afghanistan’s third major poll since 2001 to be fully free or fully fair.
These are the first elections since 2001 run primarily by Afghans – albeit with international support.
There’s been an unprecedented level of political debate and lively campaigning in this first truly contested poll.
But one embittered election expert described it as a "squandered opportunity".
Tegucigalpa, Honduras – The month-old mediation effort by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to resolve Honduras’s political crisis is foundering under the near-universal opposition of Honduras’s top leaders to permitting deposed President Manuel Zelaya to return to power.
Political, business, church, and media leaders say they can’t trust Mr. Zelaya to keep the commitments that would limit his authority under the Arias plan because, they say, Zelaya repeatedly violated the Constitution in the days that led up to his June 28 ouster over a proposed public vote that they think was aimed at extending his stay in office.
The Honduran interim government defied international pressure on Wednesday and vowed there was "no chance at all" of ousted President Manuel Zelaya returning to office.
World leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have told the new rulers of the Central American country to restore Zelaya, a leftist who was toppled by the army on Sunday and sent into exile after a dispute over presidential term limits.
Mauritania’s military rulers and opposition leaders have signed an agreement to end a political crisis following a coup last August.
Under the deal, former junta leader General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz is suspending his campaign in presidential polls that had been set for 6 June.
The vote is now due to take place in July, and the opposition is expected to contest it.
Violent protests, accusations of fraud, and a forced recount following Moldova’s election in early April were to little avail for demonstrators. The April 22 recount confirmed the Communist Party’s win announced on election day, April 5. Moldovans’ resistance to the initial outcome comes as little surprise, as Gallup has consistently found a majority of Moldovans lacking confidence in the honesty of their elections — including 59% in the most recent survey.
Moldova’s parliament has failed to elect a new president – increasing the possibility the country will have to hold a new general election.
The last election sparked violent scenes as protesters claimed the Communist Party victory was fraudulent.
The Communists needed 61 votes in the 101-seat parliament to elect their candidate Zinaida Greceanii – but only mustered 60 amid an opposition boycott.
About 150 opposition activists from South Ossetia have held an unapproved protest in front the Russian Duma in Moscow, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.
The protesters object to the policies of South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity.
Alan Gassiev, a member of the political council of the opposition People’s Party, told RFE/RL that Kokoity is implementing "antidemocratic politics."
