“We definitely can’t miss this grand chance to cast our vote. It’s like Zimbabwe is just gaining independence; the excitement to see a new government coming into power is just incredible and we hope we get a new Zimbabwe rolling again,” 38-year-old Mildred Saungweme from Harare’s Hatfield suburb, told IPS.
An increasing number of Mali’s political groups have warned of widespread fraud ahead of the presidential election on Sunday Jul. 28.
Gibson Muzungu’s hope for a free and fair election on Jul. 31 has faded after local Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front party officials seized his identity card, apparently to check if he was a registered voter.
While United States President Barack Obama and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai scramble to solidify a peace process ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, fears that the Taliban will use the drawdown to seize power hang like a dark cloud over civil society.
The violence that defined Cambodia during the years of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) may have been relegated to the realm of history, but the actions of the ruling party ahead of the Jul. 28 election smack of the dirty politics that once ruled this Southeast Asian country.
For the first time since Sri Lanka’s 30-year-long civil conflict drew to a bloody finish in May 2009, casting an eerie hush over the Northern Province that had grown accustomed to the sounds of war, there is a buzz in the air generated by the prospect of provincial elections that hold the promise of radical change.
With a population of over 1.2 million people spread across 14 government districts, the suburbs of western Sydney have long been perceived as the impoverished “other half” of Australia’s economic, financial and political hub, serving as a de facto port of entry for incoming migrant workers.
They had voted for “ubah” or change. What the youth of Malaysia got instead seems to be more of the same.
The unhealed wounds left by the 2009 coup in Honduras will continue to mark the campaign for the Nov. 24 elections, in which nine parties are participating, four of them new political groups, spanning a wide ideological range.
“Women in Pakhtun society have traditionally helped their men in hard times,” declares former Pakistani lawmaker Shagufta Malik. They are doing so again, and how, going by their hectic campaigning activity in northern Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Twenty-five-year-old Syed Hasan, a doctor practicing in a private hospital in Lahore, plans to spend most of May 11, Pakistan’s long-awaited Election Day, in bed.
More than seven weeks after the secretive arrest of prominent Iranian diplomat Bagher Asadi, an Iranian official confirmed his detention Thursday, although he declined to provide further details.
From the local butcher, to the pavement fruit vendor, to the cobbler sitting beside his tools on Elphinstone Road, a busy street in the heart of Karachi, one question is on everyone’s lips: Who will win the upcoming elections on May 11?
Bacha Khan Markaz, a two-storey building in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, is abuzz with activity. Located deep in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, whose northwestern tip borders Afghanistan, the building serves as the headquarters for the Awami National Party (ANP), which is gearing up for general elections on May 11.
As Zimbabwe heads to the polls later this year, media analysts and journalists are concerned about increasing crackdowns on both the judiciary and the media.
When Gambians go to the polls for the country’s local government elections on Thursday Apr. 4, they will have fewer candidates to choose from as six of the country’s seven opposition parties are boycotting the elections. But one opposition party says it will be fighting political repression here by participating in the elections.
Heightened political tension between the major rivals in Zimbabwe’s coalition government and increased clampdowns on civil society have left questions about the country’s readiness for a true democracy just days after people voted to adopt a new constitution.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s comments about foreigners taking Australian jobs in a speech made last week in Rooty Hill, the working-class heartland of Sydney’s western suburbs, has brought issues of immigration, asylum and race back into election campaigning.
Kenyans may have elected as president a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, but political analysts here say that Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency will not have significant implications for the country’s international standing just yet.
When Kenya’s only female presidential candidate, Martha Karua, dismissed electoral opinion pollsters who claimed that she stood a mere one percent chance of being elected to office, many said she did so because the results had not favoured her.
Days ahead of Kenya’s general elections, the country’s former deputy Minister of Information Koigi Wamwere has slammed calls for power-sharing among minority ethnic groups in the next government, calling it a “dangerous concept”.