Elections

Election officials declared Afghan President Hamid Karzai the winner of a new five-year term Monday, canceling a runoff election scheduled for Saturday just one day after Karzai’s sole challenger quit the race. The decision ended weeks of political drift since a first presidential poll in August was found invalid because of massive fraud. In...
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President Hamid Karzai’s challenger plans to call for a boycott of next weekend’s runoff election in an attempt to force the vote’s postponement until spring, his campaign manager said — a move that would dim U.S. hopes for a stable Afghan government for months. Karzai rejected Abdullah Abdullah’s conditions for next Saturday’s vote, including...
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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...
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The governing centre-right party of Albania’s Prime Minister has claimed victory in elections held last weekend. With most results in, the Democrat party headed by PM Sali Berisha was narrowly ahead of its Socialist rivals, but possibly short of a majority. However, the Socialists accused their rivals of manipulating the vote in order to...
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Dutch voters, after rejecting a draft constitution for Europe four years ago, delivered a solid bloc for anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders to take to Europe’s parliament, exit polls showed Thursday. Underscoring skepticism over further European integration, Wilders’ right-wing Freedom Party appeared set to win four out of 25 contested seats in elections for the...
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Tsakhia Elbegdorj won the presidency in with a narrow election win over incumbent Nambaryn Enkhbayar in May 24 2009. He was set to take office later in the month. Standing for the opposition Democratic Party, Elbegdorj won just over 51% of the vote, to 47% for Enkhbayar, whose ruling Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP)...
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Moldova — Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin failed on Wednesday to secure the parliament’s election of a compliant ally as his successor who would have allowed him to continue running the country behind the scenes. Voronin’s plan to win parliamentary support for fellow Communist Zinaida Greceanii came unstuck when opposition parties torpedoed the ballot with...
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