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Sierra Leone conducts
peaceful local elections
Freetown, 8 July 2008: Saturday’s local elections in Sierra Leone went off peacefully despite some violence between government and opposition supporters in the run-up to voting. The elections are seen as a test for the country’s ruling All People's Congress (APC) party of President Ernest Koroma. The vote allowed the people of Sierra Leone for the first time to vote directly for their mayors.

While official results are not expected until 10 July, early returns show that the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) party has taken the lead over the opposition in the country's local government elections. According to early results released here, APC is leading the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the capital Freetown, the western area Urban and northern Sierra Leone. According to observers, the SLPP has taken a commanding lead in the south-east of the country. The People's Movement For Democratic Change (PMDC) Party is in third place.

Sierra Leone, which is one of the world’s poorest countries, is in the process of re-building its society, economy and infrastructure after the civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2001 and left some 120,000 dead and an estimated 100,000 people, many of which children, mutilated.

Centre-right candidate
elected Dresden mayor
Dresden, 25 June 2008: After Germany’s only liberal (FDP) big-city mayor had to resign over a financial scandal, Dresden, the capital of the state of Saxony, has been recaptured by the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Helma Orosz, the new mayor, won more than 64 per cent of the vote in a second-round ballot. After the candidates from the Liberal, Green and Social Democrat parties pulled out after the first round, Orosz’ only remaining opponent was Klaus Sühl from the left-wing Die Linke party. He was supported by slightly more than 31 per cent of voters.

Dresden’s previous mayor, Ingolf Roßberg (FDP), was forced to resign in 2006 over a financial deal involving a friend of mayor and the city treasury. During the past two years the city has been governed by an interim administration.

Helma Orosz joined the CDU in 2000 and one year later was elected mayor of Weißwasser, a town of 20,000 people on the German-Polish border. In 2003, she was appointed minister for social affairs in the Saxony government. During the Dresden election campaign she came out in support of the construction of a controversial road bridge over the river Elbe. UNESCO is opposed to the bridge and has threatened to remove the area from its list of world heritage sites.

Elsewhere in Saxony, the incumbent mayor, Social Democrat Pia Findeiß, was re-elected in Zwickau, the state’s fourth-largest city.

Bucharest elects former
social democrat as mayor
Bucharest, 17 June 2008: Sorin Oprescu, who left Romania’s Social Democratic Party after it rejected him as its mayoral candidate for Bucharest, has been elected mayor on an independent ticket. The election result is a blow for the centre-right Liberal Democrat Party of President Traian Basescu, which regards the city as one of its strongholds. Oprescu won with 56 per cent of the vote.

President Basescu, who himself was mayor of Bucharest, selected his party’s former interior minister Vasile Blaga as its mayoral candidate. Oprescu, on the other hand, has close links to Ion Iliescu, a former Romanian President who served between 1992-1996 and 2000-2004 and now leads the Social Democratic Party.

Elsewhere in Romania, some 1,470 mayors were elected, with the Social Democrats winning almost one third of the contests. Turnout in both rounds of the elections was below 33 per cent.

Inconclusive outcomes
in Californian elections
Los Angeles, 11 June 2008: This year's local election races in the US state of California saw a series of inconclusive outcomes with voters now facing another trip to the polls to elect city chiefs alongside the presidency this November. While San Diego's incumbent mayor was home and dry with a second term, in Fresno and Sacramento the gap between the leading candidates was too close to call, meaning five more months of campaigning.

San Diego, the largest race in the state, saw Jerry Sanders obtain a second term on nearly 54 per cent of the vote, avoiding a run-off. Former police chief Sanders was outspent 10-1 by his principal opponent, businessman Steve Francis. The race turned ugly at one stage when Sanders' campaign manager quit after dirty tricks were revealed by a far-left candidate, who claimed to have been fed attack lines against Francis by the mayor's re-election campaign.

The non-partisan race also saw Democrat Floyd Morrow poll just six per cent, while the non-spending 'revolutionary' candidate Eric Bidwell secured four per cent of the vote. Sanders, a Republican, was first elected in the special race of 2005, becoming the city's first mayor to hold office under the new 'strong mayor' system. The combative Sanders faces the city council election this November, which could determine the success of his second term. As his first term was longer than two years he will be prevented from running again in 2012.

The other notable Californian race, in Sacramento, remains without conclusion after the strong challenge to incumbent Heather Fargo by former NBA star Kevin Johnson. Fargo, running for a third term, may face a run-off to determine the outcome after it was revealed that neither candidate has yet secured the vital 50 per cent of votes, with postal ballots and write-in votes still remaining to be counted one week after the 3 June poll. Officials claim that Fargo has obtained 40 per cent of precinct cast ballots to Johnson's 46 per cent, but a spate of last minute postal votes is holding up any declaration. It is anticipated that the trend among the two candidates is likely to hold, meaning a November run-off is unavoidable. State election law dictates that any run-off must coincide with the general election, meaning a five month delay.

The mayoral race in Fresno, also in the Central Valley area of the state, has similarly gone to a run-off after leading candidates Henry T. Perea and Ashley Swearengin polled just 239 votes apart, on 28 per cent and 27 per cent respectively. The campaign to replace current two-term mayor Alan Autry, a former actor and football player, will be played out by 31-year old Perea and 36-year old Swearengin in what is seen as a reform-minded generational shift in the city's politics.

A November run-off will also take place for the Los Angeles County supervisors' race, between former LA police chief Bernard Parks and state senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, after neither candidate obtained an outright majority. Parks, the former police chief turned councilmember and defeated mayoral candidate, complained that labor union donations to Ridley-Thomas' election effort had been unfair.

Saxony voters in no mood
to punish ruling centre-right
Dresden, 9 June 2008: Despite the greatest banking crisis in Saxony’s history, voters were in a forgiving mood and confirmed the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) as the dominant political force in eastern Germany’s most prosperous state. In local elections, held on 8 June, the centre-right party received some 41 per cent of the vote across the region. In Dresden, the state capital, the CDU’s candidate for mayor, Helma Orosz, narrowly missed out on an out-right victory and will have to take part in a second round of voting on 22 June. For the past two years, Dresden had an interim mayor after his predecessor, Ingolf Roßberg, from the Free Democrats (FDP) was suspended from office after his involvement in a corruption scandal. He later received a suspended prison sentence.

The relative success of the CDU, the party lost less than two percentage points compared to previous local elections, surprised political observers. Recently the CDU state premier was more or less forced to resign after it emerged that the state-owned bank, Sachsen Landesbank, had lost millions in North America. While the bank has now been sold, the state remains liable for any further losses that may emerge.

The Left Party (Die Linke) has firmly established itself as the main opposition party in Saxony. Across the state, the party was supported by 20 per cent of voters. It also finished second in most urban and rural districts. The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is a junior partner in the state government, suffered disappointment, receiving less than 12 per cent. In some districts the SDP was even behind the right-wing NPD, which increased its share of the vote from 1.5 to around five per cent overall.

Main opposition parties gain
in Romanian local elections
Bucharest, 8 June 2008: Romania’s anti-government parties emerged as winners of local elections held on 1 June. Official results, which were released five days late, credit the ruling National Liberal Party (PNL) with 279 seats on county councils, while the main opposition parties, the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) both won 425 seats.

In mayoral elections, held at the same time, the Social Democrats won 661 positions, while 472 newly elected mayors belong to the Democratic Liberals. The number of National Liberals mayors has been reduced to 355. Second-round elections are scheduled for 15 June in towns where no mayoral candidate obtained at least 50 per cent of the vote. In Bucharest the run-off will be between former interior minister Vasile Blaga, running on the PDL ticket and Sorin Oprescu, a hospital director, supported by the Social Democrats.

The main parties are led by the country’s dominant political personalities. The centre-right PNL, led by Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, fights the centrist PDL, supported by President Traian Basescu as wells as the centre-left PSD led by former President Ion Iliescu. Since Romania joined the European Union in 2007, President Basescu and Prime Minister Tariceanu have carried out in public a fierce political and personal feud.

Kiev’s incumbent mayor
beats ‘orange’ challengers
Kiev, 26 May 2008: After a long and heated campaign, Kiev residents have chosen a mayor from among 70 candidates on a list so long that the ballot paper measured about a meter in length. Preliminary results put incumbent Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyy clearly in the lead with almost 37 per cent of the vote. The Chernovetskyy Bloc is also leading in the city council vote.

His re-election is a blow to Ukraine’s ‘orange’ Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who secured a parliamentary vote in March to oust Chernovetskyy in connection with what she alleged were illegal land deals. The early results are also bad news for the fiery prime minister because her preferred candidate, Oleksandr Turchynov, trails Chernovetskyy with under 19 per cent in a vote largely seen as a dress rehearsal for the next presidential election in early 2010.

"The Kiev elections are a serious electoral, psychological, symbolic defeat for Yulia Tymoshenko and her bloc," says Vadym Karasiov, who heads the Kyiv-based Global Strategic Institute, a think tank viewed as close to President Viktor Yushchenko. "She initiated the elections; she thought that in these elections she would get the capital's resources, Chernovetskyy would be removed, she would reformat the city council. As it turns out, having initiated the elections, she lost them and this means a lot of voters and many of the political elite will have doubts about the political possibilities of Yulia Tymoshenko."

Other candidates linked to the 2005 Orange Revolution didn't fare much better, according to preliminary showings. Former world boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko of the pro-Western PORA-PRP group garnered almost 18 per cent of the vote, while Mykola Katerynchuk, an ally of Yushchenko, is credited so far with just over four per cent.

The fact that Tymoshenko and Yushchenko backed different candidates highlights enduring divisions within the so-called Orange camp. The two former allies fell out shortly after coming to power, the dispute culminating with Yushchenko sacking Tymoshenko as prime minister in 2005.

Mayor Chernovetskyy’s political career is marked with controversy. Both he and his wife, for instance, avoided manslaughter convictions after killing two people in separate road accidents.

Chernovetskyy has also raised eyebrows with proposals such as forcing subordinates to undergo lie-detector tests, or with his support for an evangelical church headed by a controversial African minister.

In January, Chernovetskyy made the headlines with his scuffle with Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, whom he accused of punching him in the face and groin after an argument. Lutsenko admitted slapping Chernovetskyy's face but claimed the mayor initiated the fight by kicking him in the knee. (Copyright (c) 2008. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington DC 20036)

Government parties suffer
losses in northern Germany
Kiel, 26 May 2008: Germany’s two largest parties suffered heavy losses in local elections held in Schleswig-Holstein, the country’s most northern state, on 25 May. The centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) saw its support fall by a massive 12 percentage points to 38.6 per cent of the vote, while support for the Social Democrats (SPD) declined by almost three points to 26.6 per cent, the party’s worst result ever in the state at this level. The CDU and the SPD form coalition governments in Schleswig-Holstein as well as, at national level, in Berlin.

The winners of Sunday’s elections were the smaller parties. The Green Party added two points to secure 10.3 per cent of the vote, while the Free Democrats (FDP) gained three percentage points to reach nine per cent of the vote. Germany’s new left-wing party the Left was supported by almost seven per cent of voters.

The SSW party, which represents the interests of the state’s Danish-speaking minority, won three per cent, while independent groups achieved five per cent. Voter turnout hit a new low of 49.5 per cent, five percentage points below the 2003 turnout.

The state prime minister and leader of the conservative CDU launched a vitriolic attack on his coalition partner. He accused the SPD of having facilitated the success of The Left. Indeed, if state elections, to be held in 2010, were to produce similar results, a centre-left government between the Social Democrats, the Greens and The Left Party would be the most likely outcome.

All eyes will therefore be on the state capital Kiel, where the SPD replaced the CDU as the largest party in the city parliament. Together with the Greens and the Left Party, both of which made electoral gains, the Social Democrats could form the municipal government.

Labour Party humiliated
in British local elections
London, 3 May 2008: Britain’s ruling Labour Party has been relegated to third place in local elections held on 1 May in England and Wales. Final results have the opposition Conservative Party on 44 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 25 per cent, while Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party was supported by only 24 per cent of voters. The results are Labour’s worst electoral performance in almost 40 years.

With all 159 council, where elections were held, declared, Labour lost 331 councillors, while the Conservatives gained 256 seats and took control of an additional 12 councils including Southampton, Bury, Harlow and Maidstone.

The Liberal Democrats made net gains of 34 council seats. While losing seats to the Conservatives in southern England, they benifited from Labour's weakness in the north of the country. They now control the cities of Newcastle, Sheffield and Hull. The Liberal Democrats also retained control of Liverpool after an independent councillor joined the party.

In Wales the Nationalists gained 33 councillors.

Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the results bad and disappointing but newspaper headlines called the election outcome a 'Bloodbath for Brown' or Labour's 'Black Friday'.

Conservative wins: Basingstoke & Deane, Elmbridge, Southampton, Bury, Harlow, Maidstone, North Tyneside, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Redditch, Rossendale, Solihull, Vale of Glamorgan, West Lindsey, Wyre Forest
Conservative losses: Colchester, Coventry

Labour wins: Durham, Slough
Labour losses: Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Flintshire, Hartlepool, Merthyr Tydfil, Reading, Torfaen, Wolverhampton

Liberal Democrats wins: Burnley, Kingston-Upon-Hull, Sheffield, St Albans
Liberal Democrats losses: Pendle

Across England and Wales – there were no elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland - some 13,000 candidates fought for more than 4,000 seats on 159 municipal councils, while in London voters were asked to elect a mayor and a new assembly. More election news

Berlusconi’s man
captures Rome
Rome, 29 April 2008: Gianni Alemanno, a former youth leader of Italy’s neo-fascist Social Movement, won Rome’s city hall for Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom Party. In the second round of the capital’s mayoral election he triumphed over his centre-left rival Francesco Rutelli. Rutelli, who served as mayor of Rome from 1993 to 2001, conceded defeat when with 90 per cent of votes counted, Alemanno had amassed an unassailable lead. The mayor-elect, who fought on a strong anti-immigrant platform, declared he wanted to put behind all the poison and polemics of the election campaign. “I want to be the mayor of all Romans,” he told his enthusiastic supporters.

During the campaign, Alemanno accused his socialist predecessors, Francesco Rutelli and Walter Veltroni, of being soft on crime. He called for the repatriation of some 20,000 immigrants after the alleged rape of a student by an immigrant ten days before the election. The attack, which shocked Rome, recalled the death by beating of a 47-year old women for which a Romanian was arrested.

Gianni Alemanno told television viewers that his first act as mayor would be to visit the widower of the woman and promise him that what happened to his wife would never happen again. He also announced that he would call an urgent meeting of local security chiefs to bring order to Rome and move the city out of its urban blight.

Rutelli, the defeated candidate of the left, said at a press conference that the right had exploited the two attacks on women but acknowledged that the centre-left had to convince voters that it had the right policies to tackle crime.

In other parts of Italy, left wing candidates won in the province of Rome and captured the northern cities of Vicenza and Sondrio from the conservatives. Overall however, centre-right candidates won more than half of the municipal posts at stake.

Rome mayoral candidate
rejects right-wing alliance
Rome, 22 April 2008: Gianni Alemanno, the centre-right candidate for the Rome mayoralty, has rejected an alliance with the extreme right-wing La Destra party. "After thinking over the matter, we have decided to go it alone and will not strike any agreement or alliance,” he said. The announcement came after a possible deal between Alemanno’s People of Freedom Party and right-wing groups caused uproar in Italy’s Jewish community. Its leader, Riccardo Pacifici, described the possibility as “behaviour nostalgic of fascism”.

Crime and immigration emerged as the central issues of the second round elections on 27 and 28 April. Tensions have heightened tensions over a series of alleged rapes by immigrants during the past week, right-wing candidate Gianni Alemanno has sought to place the issue as the key dividing line between himself and former mayor Francesco Rutelli's attempt to retain the mayoralty for the left.

Alemanno, an agricultural minister in the last administration of premier-elect Silvio Berlusconi and member of the People of Freedom Party, said that for too long illegal immigrants and nomads had been considered untouchable in Rome. Alemanno's statement follows provocative headlines in Italian papers such as 'Rome raped' in response to a number of high profile incidents where foreign nationals have been detained under suspicion of rape.
 
Immigration has been the hot button issue of the elections, with even former centre-left Rome mayor Walter Veltroni boasting of his record in tackling settlements of immigrants in the capital and dispersing them elsewhere. His putative successor urged calm however: "If you look at the figures, Rome is one of the safest cities in Europe," said Rutelli, Rome's mayor between 1993-2001. "Unfortunately this is not enough and doesn't satisfy anyone. That's why we're here and we want more security."

Rome’s electoral battle
to go to a second round
Rome, 16 April 2008: The race to replace Walter Veltroni as Rome’s mayor has unexpectedly gone to a second round. According to unofficial results, centre-left frontrunner Francesco Rutelli secured 44.6 per cent of the vote, while his centre-right opponent, Gianni Alemanno, received 40.6 per cent. Rutelli, culture minister in the outgoing centre-left government, resigned as mayor of the Italian capital to fight the 2001 national election as head of the Olive Tree alliance. Alemanno was agricultural minister in one of premier-elect Berlusconi’s previous administrations. It is expected that, should he fail to win in Rome, Alemanno will again be offered a ministerial post in Italy’s next centre-right government.

Before the elections Rutelli received the support of recently re-elected Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë, Berlin's Klaus Wowereit and Vienna's Michael Häupl.

In addition to the national elections and Rome's race to replace Veltroni as mayor, local polls were also held for 434 mayors, as well as nine provincial government presidents and councils. In the May 2006 elections, held shortly after Berlusconi's poll defeat at the hands of Romano Prodi, the centre-left performed consistently well across the country.

One of the few victories for Berlusconi's party in that election, the re-election of Salvatore Cuffaro as regional governor for Sicily, soured recently when he was convicted in office on account of his connections to the Mafia. Cuffaro, currently appealing against his conviction, was able to contest a senate seat in this election however and his successor, the Berlusconi-backed pro-autonomy party leader Raffaele Lombardo is a personal friend.  Lombardo won on the first round with 65.3 per cent against his centre-left opponent Anna Finocchiaro.

Opposition parties boycott
Ethiopia’s local elections
Addis Ababa, 15 April 2008: The biggest opposition party that participated in the first round of Ethiopia's nationwide elections on 13 April is planning to boycott the second part of the voting, charging the first half was rigged. Another, larger opposition group had pulled out even before the first vote. The withdrawal of the two largest opposition factions would clear the way for Ethiopia's ruling party to take control of local councils nationwide and to increase its majority in parliament.

The leadership of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement voted Monday to join a boycott when Ethiopia votes in critical municipal elections on Sunday, 20 April. The OFDM had been the largest opposition party participating last Sunday, as Ethiopians voted for the first time since 2005, when post-election protests turned deadly. Two hundred people were killed in the violence, and thousands were jailed, including most opposition leaders.

OFDM leader Bulcha Demeksa says his party had decided not to join the boycott for the first part of the vote. But Monday following the first round, he accused election officials and the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front of massive intimidation and rigging, and said his party would join the boycott. "We went in for the sake of peace and stability in our country," said Bulcha Demeksa. "We did not want to be the cause of any crisis. But when the government shows no willingness to cooperate, and wants to be the only party which governs Ethiopia, then we have no hope. We cannot work with this kind of party. We have to quit and show the world we are not able to work with them."

Bulcha says preliminary results indicate his party did not win a single race Sunday in which it entered a candidate. Official results were not immediately available, but reports from political leaders indicate the ruling EPRDF and its allies won huge majorities.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's EPRDF is almost certain to sweep the elections. The party fielded nearly four million candidates for about 3.8 million positions being contested. The 32 opposition parties combined were able to register only a few thousand candidates. Opposition leaders complained in advance that as many as 98 per cent of their prospective candidates had been rejected by election officials. (Report by Peter Heinlein, VoA)

Former Rome mayor
loses Italian elections
Rome, 15 April 2008: With almost all the votes in Italy's parliamentary election counted, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing bloc has won convincing majorities in both the Senate and the lower house. Berlusconi gave a television interview shortly after the leader of the centre-left and former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, had conceded defeat. Berlusconi said he was moved by the trust the electorate had put in him, but went on to warn his countrymen that they faced difficult months ahead.

The prime minister elect said Italy would see a new-style Berlusconi. “I will be Italy’s workhorse, improving Italy a little every day.” He also said that he saw Britain’s former prime minister Margaret Thatcher as his role model. He stressed he wanted to work with the opposition to put the necessary economic reforms in place. He also said his priorities would be the successful sale of the ailing Italian airline Alitalia and sorting out Naples' rubbish crisis. (Report by VoA and local reporters)

Egyptian voters stay away
from farcical local elections
Cairo, 9 April 2008: Egyptian voters stayed away from local elections in which President Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) won some 70 per cent of the 52,000 seats by default because most opposition candidates were barred from standing. Prior to yesterday’s elections, the country’s security agencies arrested hundreds of members of Egypt’s main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood. Leaders of the Islamic organisation then called on Egyptians to boycott the polls.

According to foreign journalists, Egyptian police also detained independent election monitors from the Egyptian Association for Supporting Democratic Development and the Egyptian Center for Development and Democratic Studies. The police also stopped foreign journalists and monitors from entering polling stations.

In the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, authorities moved quickly to quell protests against low wages and high food prices. Initially, the police used tear gas against some 7,000 protesters and arrested several hundred people. However, realising that the protests could spread to other cities, Egypt's prime minister visited the city and offered workers a 30-day salary bonus and promising to address their concerns about healthcare and wages.