In the capital, a sense of relief was instant and palpable. Kabul residents honked horns and exchanged celebratory text messages as the news spread. American, European and U.N. officials rushed to congratulate Karzai and pledged to work closely with his new administration.

Nevertheless, the decision to install Karzai without a clear electoral mandate raised questions about the legitimacy of his future administration. And despite calls for calm by his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, there were fears that opposition supporters might cause violent disturbances.

Aides to the president called a news conference Monday evening but then immediately canceled it, while Karzai was said to be conferring privately with advisers. Several hours later, security forces rushed to the Kabul airport amid reports that Abdurrashid Dostum, a former warlord and ally of Karzai, was flying back from exile in Turkey.

The terse announcement of Karzai’s victory was made by the chairman of the Afghan Independent Election Commission, Azizullah Lodin, whose removal had been demanded by Abdullah as one of several conditions for remaining in the race. After Karzai rejected the demands, Abdullah, a former foreign minister and eye doctor, withdrew Sunday, saying he did not believe the Nov. 7 runoff would be fair or transparent.

"We declare Mr. Hamid Karzai, who received a majority of votes in the first-round election and is the only candidate in the second round, as the elected president of Afghanistan," Lodin said.

He said the seven-member panel had been "fully prepared" to hold the runoff but had reached a consensus that it should be canceled for a combination of reasons. He noted there was only one candidate, that the poll would be costly and dangerous to hold, and that it could have created "many challenges to the country’s security and stability."

The chairman cited several provisions in the Afghan constitution in support of the panel’s decision, but he also compared the situation to a wrestling match. Peppered with questions about how the commission reached its conclusion, Lodin said, "If one wrestler refuses to wrestle, the referee raises the hand of the other and declares him the winner."

Lodin brushed off questions about Abdullah’s complaints that he had been biased during the election process toward Karzai, who appointed him and the other commission members. "We have answered these questions a thousand times. There is no need to discuss it further," he said through an interpreter.

Aides to Abdullah said the announcement come came as no surprise and was another indication of the panel’s favoritism toward Karzai. One aide said there might be an appeal to the Afghan Supreme Court to determine whether the election commission had the authority to cancel the runoff.

"I think people were fed up with this controversy over election," said Homayoun Shah Assefy, one of Abdullah’s running mates. "I think it’s a good thing that this is finished. Whether it’s legal or not, we can stop discussing this matter. Now he’s elected."

Despite lingering questions over the commission’s impartiality, foreign officials welcomed the announcement and said it appeared to have a constitutional basis. U.S. officials here said that even if the decision were legally challenged, the Afghan high court would probably uphold it within a short time.

Afghan election commission declares Karzai winner

Karzai rejected Abdullah Abdullah’s conditions for next Saturday’s vote, including removing top election officials whom the challenger accused of involvement in cheating in the first-round balloting in August.

Abdullah has called a press conference for 10 a.m. Sunday to announce his final decision after Afghans and Westerners close to the challenger said he would withdraw. His campaign manager Satar Murad said the candidate might still change his mind, but that "as of now" he planned to call for a boycott.

A clouded electoral picture would further complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to decide whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan to battle the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies.

The White House has been waiting for a new government in Kabul to announce a decision, but the war has intensified in the meantime. October was the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces with at least 57 American deaths.

Western officials hoped that Abdullah would make a gracious exit for the good of the country rather than denounce Karzai for fraud, a move that could sharpen tensions at a time the United States and its allies are seeking unity against the Taliban.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton downplayed the prospect of an Abdullah withdrawal, saying it would not undermine the legitimacy of the election.

"I don’t think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election," Clinton told reporters in Abu Dhabi. "It’s a personal choice which may or may not be made."

Last-minute contacts were under way late Saturday between representatives of Karzai and Abdullah to resolve the crisis, and the challenger’s spokesman Fazel Sancharaki insisted no final decision on a withdrawal had been made. It appeared the uncertainty was aimed in part at allowing Abdullah to keep his options open until the last possible moment.

"I don’t know what will happen tomorrow morning," Murad said. "We understand it shouldn’t go forward, and there should be an interim government immediately after the 7th or 8th of November" until a vote next spring, Murad said.

He said the approach of winter meant there was not enough time to organize an election that would be reasonably free of fraud.

"Therefore, it’s not good for the country, and it’s not good for the people," Murad said. "We wouldn’t be having a legitimate government in the country if we went forward."

If the election proceeds as scheduled, Abdullah will urge supporters to stay at home, and "our followers will not turn up to the election centers."

U.S. officials pressured Karzai into agreeing to a runoff after U.N.-backed auditors threw out nearly a third of his votes from the August ballot, citing fraud. Obama administration officials said they would be receptive to a power-sharing deal to avoid a runoff if Karzai and Abdullah could agree on a formula.

But Abdullah decided to exit the race after talks between the two sides broke down Thursday, according to two people close to the negotiations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the candidate.

During recent talks, Abdullah demanded the removal of three key election officials, suspension of three Cabinet members and constitutional changes that would give him a say in the appointment of ministers and in major policy decisions, according to an Afghan close to the Karzai campaign.

Karzai refused the to agree to the conditions, the Afghan said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about the confidential discussions.

Even if Abdullah withdraws, it’s unclear whether Karzai could be proclaimed the winner or if the runoff would still have to proceed, either with Abdullah on the ballot or the third-place finisher, lawmaker Ramazan Bashardost.

A spokesman for the Afghan election commission said that it is too late for Abdullah to officially withdraw and that a boycott will not prevent the runoff from going forward.

"The election will be held and all procedures will go as normal," Noor Mohammad Noor said.

U.S. officials have been concerned that the second round would expose Afghan civilians to attack by Taliban militants opposed to the election.

Last Wednesday, Taliban attackers killed five U.N. employees — including one American — and three Afghans in a brazen assault on a residential hotel housing international staff in the heart of Kabul. The three attackers also died.

Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh said Afghan authorities had advance information that a Taliban attack in Kabul was in the works but was expected it during rush hour, and officials were unsure of the target.

Instead, the attackers struck just before dawn. Saleh said eight people had been arrested for their roles in the attack, including an Afghan imam who was apprehended when he arrived by plane in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

Saleh said the detainees told interrogators the attackers came from Pakistan’s Swat Valley and that the al-Qaida mastermind fled across the border into Pakistan’s lawless tribal area, where the al-Qaida leadership is believed hiding.

Casualties have been on the rise since President Barack Obama sent more troops to confront the Taliban.

On Saturday, the NATO-led force announced the latest coalition death in the war. The Canadian Defense Department said the casualty was a 24-year-old Canadian national killed in a bomb blast outside the southern city of Kandahar on Friday.

Abdullah plans runoff boycott to delay Afghan vote

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".

Badly cheated

Some foreign election observers have worried for months what kind of language they will use the day after Afghans cast ballots on 20 August for a president and members of provincial councils.

Set the bar too high and disgruntled candidates will seize upon this verdict as convincing evidence that their victory was stolen. Set it too low and Afghans who’ve invested energy and hope in a crucial process, however imperfect, will feel badly cheated.

"Good enough" is a phrase that slipped into conversation after the last parliamentary elections in 2005, amid disappointment over some of the candidates allowed to run and persistent allegations of vote rigging.

In a highly charged political atmosphere, pressure was exerted on irate losers to accept the results and move on. Too much was at stake.

Western officials involved in the process now admit there was "very significant fraud". In some ballot boxes, neat piles of evenly folded ballots were evidence of stuffing.

A lot is also at stake this time, for Afghans and an international community determined to achieve success.

The question may be "good enough" for whom?

For all the talk of promoting democracy in Afghanistan, the ball was dropped after the 2005 polls.

Little was done to start work on this extraordinarily challenging process, despite a recommendation from the head of the Electoral Complaints Commission, Grant Kippen, to start preparations "well in advance of an election, including by means of a thorough lessons-learned analysis".

"We started too late," conceded a senior UN official.

‘Complicated elections’

In recent months, there has been a concerted push to fix gaping weaknesses and prevent the kind of fraud that could plunge Afghanistan into a political crisis at a critical juncture.

Doubts persist about the preparedness and impartiality of the Independent Election Commission. But there is praise too for its efforts to try to meet a series of deadlines.

UN envoy Kai Eide called this exercise "the most complicated elections I have seen anywhere in the world".

Nothing can be taken for granted in a country still struggling to emerge from the heavy burdens of a quarter of a century of war.

How does a young election worker confront a powerful commander or tribal leader who arrives at a remote polling station with a stack of proxy votes from his village?

How do you hire and train thousands of women to carry out security searches in deeply conservative districts where women are rarely seen in public?

Afghan democracy may be a textbook all of its own. A myriad of influences and calculations weigh on voters in a political system driven by shifting networks of patronage and traditional loyalties.

But people who have survived a lifetime of hardship should not be underestimated. In earlier polls, despite Taliban threats and intimidation by armed commanders, Afghans still turned out in the furthest corners of the country boldly to exercise their right to vote.

The first presidential election after the fall of the Taliban was truly a high-water mark – an emotional, if not euphoric, moment in 2004 where more than 70% of Afghans turned out to give Hamid Karzai 55.4% of the vote.

Afghanistan’s day of reckoning

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 win the election.

Election observers said the vote showed a marked improvement on previous polls, though there were still some concerns.

Mr Berisha said the results were a "vote of confidence" for his party and pledged that he would focus on moving Albania towards European Union membership.

"Integration is the main issue in the four years to come," the Associated Press news agency reported him as saying.

Albania joined Nato earlier this year and has filed for EU membership.

Too close to call?

Ditmir Busheti, a spokesman for the Socialist party, said party officials were investigation allegations of malpractice.

"The Democratic Party is in the process of manipulating the victory of the Socialist Party," AFP news agency reported him as saying.

"We are gathering all information confirming the manipulation of the results and we will not allow this process to be terminated until all fraud and manipulation" is revealed, he said.

With some 98% of ballot boxes counted the Democratic Party had 46.81%, narrowly ahead of the Socialists, led by Edi Rama, mayor of Albania’s capital Tirana, who had 45.42%.

A leftist coalition was trailing a distant third with just under 6%, the country’s electoral commission said.

Supporters of Mr Berisha had already taken to the streets after polls closed and preliminary results showed the Democrats in the lead.

But Mr Rama served early notice of his party’s intention to protest against any irregularities.

A spokesman for the electoral commission, Leonard Olli, told AFP on Wednesday: "You cannot claim victory until all of the ballots are counted, until the last of the votes has been counted."

Hundreds of international observers monitored the vote to avoid any repeat of problems seen in previous polls, which have been marred by violence.

The OSCE, Europe’s human rights and security watchdog, said on Monday: "Election day was overall calm and peaceful and the atmosphere was improved [compared to previous elections]."

It said new voter registration and identification procedures were a great improvement, but that public confidence had been undermined by "the politicisation of technical aspects of the process and violations observed during the campaign".

After more than 45 years of isolation under Communist rule, the country’s economy has slowly rebuilt itself.

Albania has not been as hard-hit by the global recession as many European countries but is still expecting a sharp drop in annual growth.

Albania PM claims narrow victory

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 European Parliament being held over the next four days.

Wilders, who says the Koran incites violence, said he would stop Turkey’s bid to join the bloc, an issue that causes deep fissures among the 27 European Union member states.

“Should Turkey as an Islamic country be able to join the European Union? We are the only party in Holland that says, it is an Islamic country, so no, not in 10 years, not in a million years,” Wilders said Thursday as polls opened.

According to exit polls by Dutch news agency ANP and broadcaster NOS, the Freedom Party gained four seats from none in 2005, while the three major Dutch parties all lost seats.

Despite its long history of tolerance, the Dutch have turned inward in recent years on concerns over Muslim immigration, the growing level of influence in liberal Dutch laws from Brussels and taxpayer money being contributed to the EU budget.

Dutch hard-right party scores win in Europe elections

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) said it accepted the result as fair.

The peaceful outcome came after fears that the violence which followed opposition claims of fraud after the Democratic Party’s defeat in the 2008 parliamentary elections would be repeated. Elbegdorj campaigned on promises to fight corruption and to spread the profits of Mongolia’s mineral wealth more widely.

To achieve the second aim, he planned to tighten rules for contracts under which foreign mining firms operate.
His message proved popular in the big cities, especially the Ulaanbaatar, and was helped by widespread poverty.
However, he faced a parliament which continued to be dominated by a solid MPRP majority, but the MPRP prime minister, Sanj Bayar, promised to work smoothly with Elbegdorj.

Although the prime minister and parliament exercise real political power, the president heads the armed forces and has the power of veto in parliament. Frequent changes of government have enhanced the role of the presidency.
Born in 1963, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj was one of the leaders of the peaceful revolution that ended the Communist dictatorship in 1990.

Since then, he has served as prime minister twice, briefly in 1998, and in 2006-8.

President-elect of Mongolia Ts.Elbegdorj Takes Oath Soon

Voronin’s plan to win parliamentary support for fellow Communist Zinaida Greceanii came unstuck when opposition parties torpedoed the ballot with a boycott that denied her, by just one vote, the required tally of votes for election.

The outcome triggers new parliamentary elections, though Voronin took no immediate steps to dissolve the chamber.

“We take note that there are now circumstances for dissolving the parliament,” Voronin told deputies after the result was announced.

Within an hour, Voronin read out a decree proposing that Greceanii be reinstated as prime minister and that deputies examine her candidacy and a government program on June 10.

The constitution and Moldovan legislation leave some leeway for the president because there is no specific provision saying when he must dissolve the chamber. Analysts say the campaign will likely take place either in early summer or in September.

“Moldova is in deadlock. We have a political crisis, combined with an economic crisis and now constitutional deadlock,” said Igor Botan of the Adept Association think tank.

The last parliamentary elections in April sparked violent protests.

Source

The ad, which urges women to “be beautiful and vote,” was one of the more controversial campaign advertisements rolled out by parliamentary candidate Gen. Michel Aoun, whose party is allied with the Islamist group Hezbollah and is expected to make gains in national elections Sunday.

Critics call the ad sexist and pandering, a cheap grab for attention. But with only days until the balloting, there’s not a wall, billboard or street that isn’t plastered with campaign ads, and notoriety is just more free publicity.

“Our strategy was based on one platform, which was that we have to win the elections in 2009,” said Sami Saab, the chief hand behind the ads. “At the end of the day, we made an ad campaign and we are talking to people.”

If Saab sounds like the creative director at a competitive commercial ad agency, it’s because he is. In fact, he took two months’ leave to work full time on the campaign.

The influence of consumer advertising on political campaigns over the years has affected not only the imagery but the rhetoric, said Zeina Maasri, a professor at the American University of Beirut who wrote the book “Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War.”

Whereas the small, street-level posters of the 1970s and ’80s often incorporated intricate art and calligraphy, she said, the huge billboards of today tend to rely on bright colors and simple, brief texts to convey their messages.

“The scale has affected the kind of rhetoric used, and this is true of all the parties,” Maasri said. “The way politics are advertised now is not that much different from the way commodities are advertised.”

Maasri pointed to one of the slogans of March 14, the coalition backed by the United States, as an example of pithy commercial advertising: “I think, there14 I am.”

“The play on words, the Western philosophical stance and the brevity of the message itself” are clearly the products of a modern advertising culture, she said.

In fact, Jean-Pierre Katrib, a political analyst at Quantum Communications, the firm that consulted on the March 14 ads, boasted that his company was “one of the pioneers in introducing satire and pun” to the electoral campaign.

March 14 doesn’t only play with words: The coalition’s symbol, a fist clutching an olive branch, seems suspiciously reminiscent of Hezbollah’s signature fist holding a Kalashnikov rifle.

“It could be seen as such; we don’t like to limit it to one definition,” Katrib said. “We would be very glad to see a debate being launched on this track as to what this hand represents.”

Hezbollah too has an ad campaign that many describe as effective, including yellow billboards with the words “Our Lebanon, Your Lebanon, My Lebanon” crossed out above just the word “Lebanon.”

The group’s iconic logo appears in the background, faint and faded, reassuring swing voters that its militant ways will soon dissipate as the nation becomes stronger.

Although nobody knows exactly how much each party is spending on advertising, the huge billboards and banners as tall as buildings are clearly a significant investment.

“We are talking about major official expenditures,” Maasri said.

“Then again,” she added, “before, the money would probably have gone to weapons, so maybe it’s a good sign that it’s being spent on campaigning.”

Lutz is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi contributed to this report.

Lebanon election has designs on voters

The triumph for the Party for Freedom and its leader Geert Wilders kicked off four days of European Union-wide elections involving more than 12,000 candidates competing for more than 730 seats.

Mr. Wilders’s party was expected to win four of the 25 seats allocated to the Netherlands, according to exit polls by Dutch news agency ANP.

EU leaders fear nationalist parties are gaining ground by exploiting anxieties over job losses brought on by the financial crisis. Nationalist fringe parties are expected to pick up seats in the U.K., France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Austria and Belgium. Other groups fear they could form a disruptive alliance. Still, such parties are unlikely to tip the balance of power in Brussels.

U.K. voters also went to the polls Thursday to elect European and local representatives, but full results weren’t immediately available. The Czech Republic and Ireland vote Friday, and the rest of the 27-nation bloc goes to the polls this weekend.

The European Parliament has little power, and turnout is expected to be low. But mainstream politicians and analysts have cast these elections — the first since the onset of the recession — as a political bellwether.

No politician exemplifies establishment fears more than Mr. Wilders, a charismatic orator whose platinum-blond hair has been compared to Mozart’s wig. He is a polarizing figure in European politics who has been banned from entering the U.K. under hate-speech laws. He travels with bodyguards and keeps where he sleeps a secret.

Mr. Wilders, 45 years old, has sat in the Dutch Parliament since 1998. In 2004, he left the conservative People’s Party over a dispute about whether Turkey should be allowed to join the EU. (It isn’t a member but has applied to join.) He founded the Party for Freedom and discovered a knack for tapping into Dutch xenophobia.

The Netherlands has 800,000 Muslims, mostly Turks and Moroccans, in a population of 17 million. Mr. Wilders has progressively ramped up his anti-Islamic rhetoric, calling the Koran a “fascist book” and making a movie depicting Islam as inherently violent. The British government cited the movie, “Fitna,” as grounds to ban Mr. Wilders from visiting the U.K. earlier this year.

Mr. Wilders added a strong anti-EU plank to his platform during a 2005 Dutch referendum on a new EU constitution. He helped defeat the measure, effectively scuttling the project.

His party, known by its Dutch acronym, the PVV, won nine of 150 seats in parliament in the 2006 national elections. Polls now show that roughly one-fifth of Dutch voters support Mr. Wilders, making the PVV the most popular political group in the country and its leader a long-shot candidate for prime minister. The next general election, however, isn’t until 2011.

Mr. Wilders favors a style straight from the populist playbook. “He’s like Ross Perot or George W. Bush in his ability to connect to ordinary people,” says Catherine de Vries, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam.

The party’s platform in this election promises to fight crime, deport illegal immigrants and dilute the power of EU institutions in Brussels.

“He’s been successful in taping into real fears about the economy and foreigners taking away jobs,” says Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch member of the European Parliament who is of Turkish origin.

Mr. Wilders is running but says he won’t take a seat in the European Parliament, which sits in Brussels and Strasbourg. He prefers to focus on building a coalition in national politics, says an aide. A deputy, Barry Madlener, will lead the party’s parliament delegation.

Nationalists Gain Ground in Dutch Vote

Current President Nambaryn Enkhbayar of the former Communist party is being challenged by Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the main opposition Democratic Party.

Polls opened at 2300 GMT on Saturday are due to close at 1400 GMT on Sunday.

One of the main election issues has been the distribution of income from Mongolia’s vast mineral resources.

Last year, five people died and hundreds were hurt in protests over alleged fraud in the general elections.

In 1990, Mongolia abandoned its 70-year-old Soviet-style one-party state and embraced political and economic reforms.

Democracy and privatisation were enshrined in a new constitution, but the collapse of the economy after the withdrawal of Soviet support triggered widespread poverty and unemployment in the sparsely-populated landlocked country.

Mongolians vote for new president