Tag Archives: elections

Five Challenges Facing India’s Election Victors

Despite predictions of a close race forcing an unstable coalition government, India’s Congress Party on Saturday claimed a major victory in national elections, leaving it with enough parliamentary seats to form a government with only minimal support from other parties. Congress is expected to win 205 out of 543 seats, according to India’s Election Commission, garnering 124 million votes. So how does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plan to use the electorate’s strong mandate for his second term in office?

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Roxana Saberi: Out of Iranian Prison, Into a Soap Opera

In an unexpectedly swift move, a Tehran court reduced the sentence of Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi and released her from prison on Monday, only a day after she appealed her case in court. Last month, Saberi had been sentenced to eight years imprisonment on charges of spying for the United States, causing tension between the two countries at a time when President Barack Obama had declared his Administration’s intention to improve relations with Iran. Just before the official announcement came, Saberi’s parents and lawyers, as well as dozens of reporters, had gathered in front of Tehran’s Evin prison in anticipation of her release

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Voting begins in South African elections

South Africans headed to the polls Wednesday, in elections that the ruling African National Congress is expected to win in a landslide. Polls indicate that the ANC might lose its two-thirds parliamentary majority. The ANC, led by Jacob Zuma, has gained votes in every election since 1994, but a new player, Congress of the People, threatens the party’s grip on power.

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S. African vote tests ANC’s grip on power

The ruling African National Congress is expected to win Wednesday’s elections in South Africa by a landslide, but polls predict it might lose its two-thirds parliamentary majority. The ANC has gained votes in every election since 1994, but a new player that threatens the party’s grip on power has entered the fray. The ANC is also dogged by corruption and is accused of failing to deliver services to the poor.

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Indonesia’s parliamentary elections begin

Voting has begun in Indonesia’s parliamentary elections, with 38 parties vying for one of 700 parliamentary seats. The outcome of the election will determine which parties can field presidential candidates for the July election. Damin Sada, from the Islamic-based United Development Party, is one from among 12,000 election candidates

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India’s Dynastic Feud: A Gandhi Who Hates Muslims

The spectacle in India is riveting: virulent anti-Muslim diatribes spouted by a pedigreed and ambitious young Hindu politician who shares the surname of the world’s foremost apostle of non-violence and who is descended from the Prime Minister who founded modern India as a secular state to serve the country’s multiplicity of faiths. Since early March, Varun Gandhi, 29, has been the scandal of India’s political class after he called for, among many things, the hands of Muslims to be cut off if they are raised against Hindus, their throats to be slashed, their population to be culled by strict birth control. His words triggered India’s stringent National Security Act, and for days the young Gandhi was a fugitive from the law

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Bomber kills 25 at Iraq peace conference

At least 25 people were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide car bombing targeting a national reconciliation conference in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official told CNN. Tuesday’s attack on a municipal building of Abu Ghraib in western Baghdad came as tribal leaders were attending the conference, the official said. The bombing came three days after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rallied sheikhs of the nation’s tribes to participate in Iraq’s government.

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