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Indian voters not put off by
deadly attack during election
New Delhi, 31 January 2012: Despite a deadly attack on a polling station, voters turned out in high numbers to elect a new regional assembly in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur. Rebels, believed to be from the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, staged the assault on a crowded polling station, killing three election officials, a paramilitary trooper and a civilian. The state’s chief electoral officer praised the public, saying that he was proud that the terrorist attack didn’t scare off voters from exercising their voting rights. Turnout was above 82 per cent.

Manipur is the first of five states to hold regional elections within the next few weeks. The results, which will not be announced until 6 March, will be seen as a test for India’s ruling Congress government. As well as elections in Manipur, votes will also take place in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Goa.

The National Socialist Council of Nagaland, which is the largest of several separatist groups in Manipur, is fighting for an independent homeland. They regard the New Delhi government as colonialist and cite racial, cultural and linguistic differences as reasons for their struggle for more independence. They are connected with other acts of violence including car bombs. In the run-up of the elections, explosions killed at least two people. The rebel separatists also called for an election boycott. (Report by City Mayors’ India Correspondent.)

Right-wing candidates succeed
in Cyprus mayoral elections
Nicosia, 20 December 2011: Nicosia’s incumbent mayor Eleni Mavrou lost her bid for a second term in Cyprian local elections held last Sunday. The left-wing mayor was defeated by Constantinos Yiorkadjis, an independent supported by a number of centre-right and right-wing parties. In Strovolos, part of the Nicosia metro area, the three-term mayor Savvas Eliofotou was ousted by another right-wing politician - Lazaros Savvides.

Nicosia’s mayor-elect said the city was now on course to reverse negative developments. “I thank voters for their decision to work together, in order to change Nicosia, making it a proud city,” he added. 

Elsewhere in Cyprus, the right-wing opposition party DISY captured 26 mayoral seats out of a total of 38. But in Limassol, Mayor Andreas Christou, a former cabinet minister of the left-wing AKEL party, was re-elected for a second five-year term after he took 57 per cent of the vote. Christou said he would continue work already underway, adding that congratulations for this victory belonged to voters who made their choice in a clear and unambiguous way. 

The new Kyrenia Mayor, Glafkos Kariolou, who took 52 per cent of the vote, was backed by the Green Party.

The mayoral results for Cyprus’ largest cities are:
Nicosia: Constantinos Yiorkadjis
Limassol: Andreas Christou
Paphos: Savvas Vergas
Larnaca: Andreas Louroudjiadis
Strovolos: Lazaros Savvides
Kyrenia: Glafcos Kariolou
Engomi: Zacharias Kyriakou
Agia Napa: Antonis Tsokkos
Dali: Leontes Kallenos

Syria holds local elections
among protests and violence
Beirut, 13 December 2011: Despite violence that continues to roil the country, Syria's government is holding local council elections this week as it downplays anti-government unrest as the work of a small group of foreign-backed terrorists. Witnesses said voter turnout for the elections across the country was light. But Judge Khalaf Azawi, who heads Syria's electoral commission, told journalists that the voting process was a success and that many voters turned out to cast their ballots.

He said the democratic process was positive, thanks to the electoral law, which guaranteed that elections take place in a free, democratic, and transparent way. He added that voter turnout seemed heavy, during his visits to polling stations, showing democracy at work.

But in a suburb of Syria's second largest city of Aleppo, opposition activists ripped up and burned election posters, calling candidates government lackeys, while people in parts of Aleppo and other Syrian towns and cities took in an opposition-led general strike. Syria's Information Minister, Adnan Mahmoud, said given that the elections took place during the current political conditions, it demonstrated that they were a success.

He stressed that the elections happened on schedule, despite the current events that Syria is living through, showing the resolve of Syrian leaders in moving forward.

Some western political observers argue that while the local elections are a step in the right direction but they are probably too little, too late. Timor Goksel, who teaches at the American University of Beirut said: “These are the sort of moves the government could have done at the beginning without taking on the people and making this a regime-change war. Now, whether it will be a beginning step or a remedy, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how effective it will be.”

Meanwhile, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said her office has received credible reports from a variety of sources that indicate the death toll since the unrest began in March probably exceeded 5,000. She told UN Security Council representatives in New York that the violence should be examined by the International Criminal Court. "So it is based on the evidence and the widespread and systematic nature of the killings, the detentions and the acts of torture that I felt that these acts constituted crimes against humanity, and I recommended that there should be a referral to the International Criminal Court," she said. Pillay also warned that sources fear a major assault on the flashpoint city of Homs may be imminent. (Report by Edward Yeranian, VoA News)

Vancouver mayor’s re-election
unaffected by Occupy protests
Vancouver, 21 November 2011: Despite predictions of a close race, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson won an easy victory in mayoral elections on Saturday. The left-of-centre mayor, who espoused many green issues, defeated his closed rival, Suzanne Anton from the conservative Non-Partisan Association (NPA) by more than 18,000 votes. In addition, all seven candidates in Mayor Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party were elected to the city council.

During the campaign Mayor Robertson was criticised over his handling of the Occupy Vancouver protests. Political opponents accused the mayor of failing to show leadership and being soft on the protesters, who have occupied the public plaza in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

The mayor’s assertion that voters were not focused on Occupy Vancouver but cared about long-term issues was backed up by an opinion poll that showed that Vancouver residents viewed the Robertson administration favourably on issues such as sanitation services, protecting the environment, promoting tourism, ensuring public safety, having designated bike lanes and fostering artistic and cultural activities. But respondents gave the municipal government low marks for enhancing quality of life, homelessness and helping small businesses.

In Saturday’s election, Vision Vancouver easily dominated the vote, with support from both the traditional left as well as a significant contingent of the city’s developers, all the major unions, a huge group of under-35s, a wide group of ethnic communities including Filipino, Indo-Canadian and Chinese.

Elsewhere in British Columbia, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts celebrated an emphatic victory, gaining more than 80 per cent of votes cast and securing all seats on the city council for her centrist Surrey First party.

During the campaign, Mayor Watts, who was shortlisted for the 2010 World Mayor Prize, pledged light rail transit and a safer city for families. Her Surrey First team swept to power on Saturday, winning every council seat and ending the political career of long-term leftist incumbent Bob Bose. The victory leaves Mayor Watts and her eight councillors with no political opposition as they push forward with ambitious building plans, including a new city hall in the city centre.

Voter turnout in Surrey was barely over 25 per cent, while in Vancouver some 30 per cent of registered voters cast their votes. In comparison, Calgary and Toronto had voter turnouts of over 50 per cent in recent mayoral elections.

Pro-Beijing parties win in
Hong Kong local elections
Hong Kong, 8 November 2011: Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politicians said they would review their future election strategies after their pro-Beijing rivals scored big wins in Sunday's municipal elections in the Chinese special administrative region. Radio Television Hong Kong said yesterday pro-Beijing and pro-establishment candidates won 43 per cent of the 412 district council seats open for election, increasing their share of seats from the last vote in 2003. The broadcaster said pro-democracy candidates won just 20 per cent of the district council seats, with non-partisan independents taking the rest. Seventy-six seats were elected unopposed.

Hong Kong's main pro-democracy groups, the Democratic Party and the Civic Party, won a combined 54 seats, four fewer than the last election. Five prominent party members, who serve in powerful roles as legislative councilors, lost their district council races. Party leaders said they would rethink their campaign strategies to try to avoid similar setbacks in next year's Legislative Council elections.

In some constituencies, radical pro-democracy parties ran against moderate democracy activists. Some observers said the split in the pro-democracy vote helped pro-establishment candidates win. Civic Party leader Alan Leong also accused pro-government candidates of engaging in a “smear” campaign by accusing his group of supporting efforts by foreign domestic workers to gain permanent residency in the territory.

Some Civic Party members, who serve as lawyers, have helped domestic workers challenge laws that prevent them from becoming Hong Kong citizens. Most of the city's domestic workers are Filipinos and Indonesians. Many Hong Kong residents fear that granting them permanent residency will strain their welfare and medical systems.

A record 1.2 million people turned out to vote for the district council election, equivalent to 41 percent of the electorate. Hong Kong district councilors advise the government on neighborhood issues such as traffic and sanitation, but otherwise have little power. District councilors may see their influence grow next year, under a democratic reform plan.

Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 under a mini-constitution that enables the city to maintain its own economic, legal and political systems for 50 years. As part of hand-over of sovereignty, China agreed to allow Hong Kong to move toward full democratic elections for the territory's leader and legislature over a period of years. (Report by VoA News)

Low turnout in all-male
Saudi local elections
Riyadh, 30 September 2011: Saudi Arabian men were voting yesterday in the country's second-ever nationwide local election. Turnout was low in the all-male election. Voters trickled into the polls to cast ballots for local council places. More than 5,000 male candidates were running for 1,056 seats in nearly 300 local councils nationwide. The elections will fill half the seats on local government councils. The other half of seats is filled by government appointees.

The kingdom has 1.2 million registered male voters. Women are not allowed to vote in this election, but Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah announced earlier this week that women would have the right to vote and run in local elections starting in 2015. King Abdullah also said that women would be appointed to the Shura Council starting with its next term. The Shura Council is an advisory body, which is selected by the monarch and so far has been all male.  

However, two days after the king's announcement, a court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah sentenced a Saudi woman to 10 lashes for challenging the conservative Muslim kingdom's ban on women driving.

Amnesty International welcomed the new right to vote but said the king's "much-trumpeted" reforms amounted to "very little" if women are still going to face physical punishment for "trying to exercise their right to freedom of movement."

Sources within the Saudi government say King Abdullah overturned the court's verdict on Wednesday. There is no written law in Saudi Arabia barring women from driving, only fatwas, or religious edicts, stemming from a strict tradition of Islam called Wahhabism. (Report by VOA News)

Berlin re-elects its mayor but
the Pirates are the real winners
Berlin, 19 September 2011: Mayor Klaus Wowereit’s Social Democrats (SPD) have remained the largest party in the Berlin parliament, despite suffering slight losses in yesterday’s local elections. The Christian Democrats (CDU) of German Chancellor Angela Merkel came second by improving their 2006 results by 2.5 percentage points. The technology-friendly Pirate Party made its debut in a German legislature, capturing almost nine cent of the vote. Formed in 2006, the party was able to win widespread support from young Berliners. The Pirate Party has expanded its platform from its original push from file sharing and data protection on the Internet to include education and citizens rights.

While the Green Party increased its share of the vote from 13 to 17.5 per cent, they failed in their aim to become the German capital’s second-largest party. Some six months ago after some favourable opinion polls, the party’s mayoral candidate, Renate Künast, even thought she might have a chance of replacing Klaus Wowereit as mayor.

The biggest losers were the Free Democrats (FDP), Merkel's coalition partner at the national level. They won less than two per cent of the vote, far short of the five per cent needed to win seats in the city state legislature. The loss in Berlin, which is both a city and a state, is its fifth loss at the regional level this year. In the 2009 German general elections the FDP secured the support of more than 14 per cent of voters.

The success of the SPD means that Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, will remain in office for a third term. Wowereit, who became the first openly gay leader of a German state in 2001, is known for his popular touch and distinctive Berlin accent. He has ruled in alliance with the Left Party (Linke) for ten years but could switch allegiance to the Greens. The Left Party secured 11.6 per cent of the vote. A coalition with the conservative CDU would also be possible.

Norway’s moderate parties
make gains in local elections
Oslo, 13 September 2011: Norway’s Progress Party, which once counted the right-wing extremist Behring Breivik as one of its members, suffered huge losses in yesterday’s local elections, while Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s Labour Party enjoyed its best result in two decades. But the centre-right Conservative Party made the biggest gains, increasing its share of the vote from 19 per cent in 2007 to 28 per cent yesterday. The start of campaigning for the local elections was delayed to allow a period of mourning after Breivik killed 77 people in twin attacks against government offices in Oslo and a Labour Party youth camp.

While Prime Minister Stoltenberg hailed the election results as a clear sign that the Norwegian people rejected rightwing, anti-immigrant ideology, Siv Jensen, the leader of the Progress Party vowed the party would rebuild and make a comeback in time for national elections in 2013.

The 2011 results, with 2007 figures in brackets:
Labour Party: 31.6% (29.6%)
Conservative Party: 28% (19.3%)
Progress Party: 11.4% (17.5%)
Centre Party: 6.8% (8%)
Liberal Party: 6.2% (5.9%)
Christian Democrats: 5.6% (6.4%)
Socialist Party: 4% (6.2%)

Two largest parties suffer
losses in Lower Saxony
Hannover, 12 September 2011:  Germany’s two largest political parties, the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) both suffered losses in local elections held yesterday in Lower Saxony (Niedersachen), the country’s fourth-largest state by population and second-largest by area. The Green Party profited from the weaknesses of its rivals, while the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) lost half its previous support.

The CDU, which governs the state in coalition with the FDP, saw its share of the vote drop from 41 per cent in 2006 to 37 per cent, while the SPD suffered smaller losses – down from 36.6 per cent to 35 per cent. The Greens almost doubled its share of the vote, up from 7.8 per cent in 2006 to 14.3 per cent now. The losses suffered by the FDP in Lower Saxony – down from 6.7 per cent to 3.4 per cent – further strengthen arguments that the party is becoming a marginal force in German politics.

There were also mayoral elections in a number of cities. The greatest upheaval occurred in Wolfsburg, home of Europe’s largest motor manufacturer Volkswagen, where the SPD candidate Dieter Mors won 63 per cent of the vote thus ending 10 years of CDU rule. Wilhelmshaven’s new mayor is the CDU politician Andreas Wagner, who finished ahead of nine other contestants with 36 per cent of the vote. Since the last local elections in 2006, Lower Saxony abandoned run-off mayoral elections in favour of a first-past-the-post procedure.

Yesterday’s elections decided the make-up of more than 2,220 urban and rural councils. In addition voters in 114 municipalities and rural counties were asked to choose new mayors or county leaders. Voter turnout, at 52.5 per cent, was slightly higher than five years ago. Lower Saxony’s prime minister (state governor) is David McAllister (CDU), who was born in 1971 in Berlin to a Scottish father and a German mother. The state capital is Hannover with a population of 523,000.

Somber start for Norway’s
local election campaign
Oslo, 14 August 2011: Campaigning for next month’s local elections in Norway started yesterday after being delayed for three weeks because of the killing of 77 people on 22 July by the right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik. All major political parties indicated that they would campaign low-key to reflect the still somber mood in the country. In several cities centre-left and centre-right parties conducted joint events. In Oslo opposing politicians shared platforms, expressing views that united them rather than attacking each others policies.

Oslo’s conservative mayor Fabian Stang said the political debate would be conducted in a manner that strengthened democracy. His Labour Party opponent Libe Rieber-Mohn told journalists her party’s campaign would be one of reflection. “We lost friends who would have competed for the first time for political office in next month’s elections,” she explained.

Two recent opinion polls have indicated that as many as 81 per cent of Norwegians would vote on 12 September, compared to the 61 per cent of voters who took part in the 2007 local elections.

Sri Lankan ruling party
fails to win in Tamil north
Colombo, 5 August 2011: Elections for 65 local councils, which had been delayed since March, were held across Sri Lanka last month. The country’s ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) won 45 local bodies, mainly in southern provinces. In the war-torn north, however, Tamil people used the opportunity to overwhelmingly express their hostility to the government. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 15 of the 20 councils in the north and 3 in the east. The Tamil United Liberation Front, which contested the elections in collaboration with the TNA in the Vanni area of the north, gained two.

The UPFA campaigned heavily in the north, where most of the island’s Tamil minority live. Its aim was to win local bodies, to show that it had the support of Tamils and to counter criticism of the war crimes committed during its war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Aware of the deep opposition among people in the north, the ruling party hurriedly announced “development projects” and eased restrictions on coastal fishing. At the same time, it resorted to violence against opposition parties, including physical attacks, openly flouting the election laws. This intimidation included the use of the military, which continues to occupy the north.

Even then, the UPFA only gained the majority of seats in just three local councils on the small islands of Delft, Kayts and Velanai, west of the Jaffna peninsula. These areas have been controlled for a long time by the Sri Lankan navy with the support of the Eelam People Democratic Party (EPDP), whose paramilitary forces routinely employ violence against any opposition. The campaigns of the TNA and other opposition parties were barred in these islands.

The TNA immediately seized on its election gains to step up its bargaining with the Colombo government. A TNA statement claimed that the election results showed support for a “political solution.” It added: “The demand of the Tamil people is for political autonomy with all the powers in their motherland that is linked together in the North and the East.” (Report by Subash Somachandran and S. Jayanth)

Mexico’s ruling party humbled
in regional and local elections
Mexico City, 6 July 2011: The local and regional elections held in Mexico last Sunday were widely seen as a forerunner to next year’s presidential elections. The results have confirmed what most opinion polls have said for months – the country’s centre-left opposition party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is on an upward curve, while President Felipe Calderón’s ruling National Action Party (PAN) is deeply unpopular. The PRI, which ruled Mexico uninterruptedly from 1929 to 2000, recorded more than 62 per cent support in gubernatorial elections in Mexico State, the country’s most populous state, and won the gubernatorial contests in Coahuila and Nayarit states, with more than 50 per cent of the vote.

In Mexico State the PRI candidate Eruviel Ávila, currently mayor of Ecatepec, will be replacing Enrique Peña Nieto, who is most likely to be the PRI’s presidential candidate next year. Opinion polls put him ahead of any challengers from the left or the right of the political spectrum. The PRI won in every of the state’s 125 municipalities. The centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) came second, winning a respectable 20 per cent of the vote and pushing the PAN into third place.

In Hidalgo State, which elected a PRI governor last year, the party and its allies won half of the 82 mayoralties, while PAN and PRD candidates, either in coalition or on their own, captured 24 city halls.