Осетрова Е. Е. Пособие по общественно-политическому переводу elections

At least eight people have been killed in violent clashes in Iran as conservatives look set to win a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.

The unrest, amid a growing dispute over voter turnout³⁴, broke out in towns in southern and western Iran, where angry crowds clashed with police.

In Firouzabad in the south, the fighting erupted when locals suspected ballot-rigging in a tight race between a reformist candidate and a conservative and called for a recount. In Izeh, hundreds of people stormed the governor's office and attacked government and judicial buildings.

Such violence is unusual in Iran, where electoral conflict is rare and usually tribal, but it reflects a national row between conservatives and reformists over the level of voting.

As conservatives celebrated a "massive turnout", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, hailed it as a victory against the regime's detractors, referring to a statement from the United States that the election had been unfair.

Muhammad Ali Abtahi, the Iranian Vice-President, said that it was 50 per cent – the lowest turnout in parliamentary elections since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Turnout was far lower than for the sixth parliamentary elections in 2000, when two thirds of voters gave the reformists a large majority.

Turnout was lowest in Tehran, where national politics play a greater role in voting patterns, with participation falling below 30 per cent. This has been attributed to disillusionment with reformist and conservative factions alike.

The reformists look even weaker than they did before the elections. In Tehran, all 30 parliamentary seats – taken by reformists in the last election – have gone to the conservative party, Alliance for the Advancement of Islamic Iran. The conservative win will further isolate President Khatami, who faces one more year in office as a lame duck president. For many, it will also confirm his ineffectual image and inability to push through the social and political reforms that he had promised.
2. Gandhi Dynasty Poised For Power

New Delhi, India – India's most famous political dynasty is poised to take back power in the world's largest democracy after voters delivered one of the biggest upsets in the nation's history.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned Thursday night after his governing coalition suffered a landslide defeat in parliamentary elections.

Sonia Gandhi is meeting with members of her Congress party Friday, setting the stage for the return of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which led India to freedom from British colonial rule and then ran the nation for 40 years.

While working swiftly to build a new coalition government around her family's party, the Italian-born Gandhi has remained non-committal about whether she will be the next prime minister.

Congress MPs are due to meet on Saturday to choose their party leader, who would also be expected to head the new government. After the size of her win, Gandhi – whose husband and mother-in-law once led India – is the front-runner.

The political maneuvering on Friday came after incumbent Prime Minister Vajpayee resigned in a stunning election turnabout, ending nearly six years in power.

Gandhi's Congress party and its coalition allies gained 279 seats on Thursday, enough for a slim majority in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, or national parliament.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won just 187 seats, prompting the 79-year-old Vajpayee to resign.

Vajpayee, who had been the favourite heading into the race, argued he deserved another five years in office because he had turned the economy around.

President George W Bush pledged to unite the nation in his second term in office yesterday after his Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry conceded defeat following a dramatic climax to one of the more bruising campaigns in American history.

Aides said he felt jubilant that after his victory by 51 to 49 per cent of the popular vote he at last had an indisputable mandate to govern.

Four years ago he won his first term amid bitter wrangling after losing the popular vote by 500,000.

His victory also healed a 12-year-old familial wound: Mr Bush has never forgotten the pain of his father's defeat by Bill Clinton in 1988 after only one term in office.

For Mr Kerry it was the end not just of an impassioned nine-month campaign but of a lifelong ambition to live in the White House.

Accompanied by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and his running mate Senator John Edwards, he delivered a heartfelt concession speech in his home town of Boston.

His concession was the formal ending of one of America's most riveting campaigns as Mr Bush battled for re-election in the face of heated attacks, in particular over the decision to go to war in Iraq.

At dawn yesterday there was still a chance that the election would follow the acrimonious route of the poll in 2000 when disputes in Florida ended in the Supreme Court.

After an agonising night with the results trickling in, all hinged on the result in Ohio, which for months had been seen as the key battleground. With most of the votes there counted Mr Bush was ahead by about two percentage points, some 130,000 votes.

Victory in Ohio would give him the majority of seats he needed in the electoral college to be sure of victory. But Democrats had vowed to contest any remotely close results and at 2.30am Mr Edwards said there would be no concession that night, hinting at legal challenges.

For a few hours the prospect loomed of a post-election limbo, as at emerged that the Democrats were considering insisting on counting provisional ballots, which are given to voters who move house. This could have taken 12 days.

Mr Bush cancelled his plans to deliver a victory speech, and went to bed as Mr Kerry's senior staff were closeted in fraught discussions over the best course of action.

But it soon became clear that it was all but statistically impossible for him to make up the shortfall by the outstanding provisional ballots. In the middle of the morning Mr. Kerry made his three-minute telephone call to Mr Bush to concede. The president told him that he was an "admirable worthy opponent" who should be proud of the campaign he had run, the White House said.

For Republicans there was much to celebrate. As well as retaining the White House, they picked up at least three more seats in the Senate, entrenching their control on Capitol Hill. An added boost was the defeat of Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Mr Bush now has the chance to pursue the war in Iraq with renewed vigour as well as his conservative economic agenda of tax cuts.

The proposal from the Ivanovo regional legislature, was put on the Duma's agenda Thursday, five weeks ahead of the presidential election that Putin is expected to win in a landslide.

Gryzlov said United Russia, which has more than 300 seats in the 450-seat Duma, will oppose the change. "The United Russia faction won't support this initiative," he told reporters.

Putin reaffirmed his opposition to the notion Thursday.

Regardless of the fate of the proposal, the legislative action Thursday reinforced the fears of critics that the victory of pro-Putin forces in December's Duma elections means he may remain in office past 2008, when the Constitution requires that he step down.

"Putin is not a tsar yet, and he personally may not even want to become one, but he is being pushed into becoming a tsar from all possible sides," Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent deputy, said Thursday.

To amend the Constitution to change the length or number of presidential terms requires a two-thirds majority in the Duma and a three-quarters majority in the Federation Council. It also needs the president's signature and approval by two-thirds of the regional legislatures.

Optional texts

The ruling coalition led by Junichiro Koizumi retained power in yesterday's lower house election in Japan but with a slightly smaller majority as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan made substantial gains.

The election marks the beginning of what most analysts consider a genuine two-party system after half a century of near-total domination by the Liberal Democratic party.

The LDP-led three-party coalition won 275 seats in the 480-seat lower house against 287 last time. On its own, the LDP won 237 seats compared with 177 for the DPJ.

A tired-looking Mr Koizumi rejected suggestions that the result was a set-back, although he admitted that the DPJ had gained significant momentum after its recent merger with the Liberal party.

He conceded the LDP would have liked to have won 241 seats, which would have given it a simple majority in the lower house without counting on its coalition partners, Komeito and the New Conservatives. However, the party beat the 233 seats it won in June 2000.

The DPJ's haul of seats was substantially higher than the 137 it had previously, but lower than Mr Kan's target of 200. Nonetheless, Mr Kan, a former grassroots activist, said the DPJ had transformed the electoral scene by fighting on a firm set of policies.

He described Mr Koizumi's grip on power as fragile, dependent on coalition partners whose policies differed in important areas such as pensions reform and amending the constitution.

The DPJ gained at the expense of small parties such as the Communists and Social Democrats. The New Conservatives lost a number of seats, including that of its leader Hiroshi Kumagai. The Buddhist-backed Komeito party underlined its importance to the LDP, bringing in 34 seats.

The DPJ did reasonably well in spite of the low turnout of 60 per cent against 62 per cent last time. A higher turnout usually benefits the DPJ.

Shinzo Abe, LDP secretary-general, conceded that the DPJ had done well in the cities. It took the election's biggest scalp by toppling Taku Yamazaki, deputy secretary-general of the LDP and one of Mr Koizumi's closest allies, in Fukuoka.

Afghanistan yesterday formally declared Hamid Karzai its first elected president.

Mr Karzai, the country's interim leader for the past three years, won the vote after an inquiry into alleged voting fraud found no grounds to invalidate the result.

"Hamid Karzai is the winner of the election," Zakim Shah, the chairman of the Joint United Nations-Afghan electoral board announced in Kabul yesterday. "We are announcing the first elected president of Afghanistan."

Mr Karzai won 55 per cent of the vote, 39 points ahead of his nearest rival and enough to avoid a second round of voting.

He has won a five-year term but the political process will be completed only after parliamentary elections are held in April, although these are likely to be delayed.

Eight million Afghans voted, an exceptionally high turnout of 70 per cent, demonstrating a widespread desire for democracy and change.

It is still not clear if Mr Karzai's nearest rival, the Tajik leader and former education minister Younus Qanooni, who won 16 per cent of the vote, has accepted the result.

An aide to Mr Qanooni said the UN's election report was "unacceptable".

Mohammed Mohaqeq, the warlord from the Hazara ethnic group who came third with almost 12 per cent of the vote, has also vowed "never" to recognise Mr Karzai's government.

Mr Karzai, a Pathan tribal chief who re-entered the country in 2001 to raise the banner of revolt against the Taliban, won votes across the ethnic groups. But his biggest backing came from the majority Pathans.

Mr Karzai and western diplomats in Kabul now face the difficult task of persuading his opponents to accept the results.

Much now depends on the presidency. The office carries limited formal powers, but they include the right to nominate the prime minister. If Mr Nastase wins, he will probably appoint Mircea Geoana, the outgoing foreign minister, as head of a minority psd government that relies tacitly on votes from the Greater Romania Party for its majority. If Mr Basescu wins, he can opt for cohabitation, or he may try to install a minority centre-right government that will fall in due course, paving the way for another general election.

1. 
   All second-term presidents become lame ducks (though they seldom limp and quack this early).
   
2. 
   Labour is heading for a historic third-term victory over the Conservatives with a possible three-figure majority, according to the results of the Guardian/ICM eve-of-election survey.
   
3. 
   If pyramids could fly, there might have been a chance of Hosni Mubarak, after 24 years as Egypt’s dictator, being voted out of pharaonic power in his country’s first-ever multi-candidate presidential election this week.
   
4. 
   Blair presided over two landslide victories for Labour in 1997 and 2001 and appears poised, barring some extraterrestrial intervention, to win handily again.
   
5. 
   Russia resents the role played by the security body OSCE in elections that helped return west-oriented presidents.
   
6. 
   Tony Blair will embark today on a 72-hour blitz of marginal constituencies to try to halt an erosion of Labour’s majority that could leave him as a lame-duck Prime Minister for his final term.
   
7. 
   Mr Lopez Obrador’s popularity helped his leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution to a landslide victory in last month’s elections for Mexico City’s assembly.
   
8. 
   Other key reforms are off the government's agenda because of its slim two-vote parliamentary majority, opposition from leftwing Social Democrats and the closeness of the next election.
   
9. 
   In an unruly session of Parliament, Yanukovich's allies rejected the criticism, declaring their candidate would defeat the liberal challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, in the Nov. 21 contest. With returns from Sunday's first round nearly complete, Yanukovich, an advocate of closer ties with Russia, was nearly even with the West-leaning Yushchenko.
   
10. 
    India's ruling Bharatiya Janata party yesterday won sweeping election victories in three of the country 's biggest states in a result that could profoundly affect the future of Indian politics.
    
11. 
    Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate blamed by supporters of Al Gore for President Bush’s narrow victory in 2000, sent shivers through Democrats yesterday by announcing be would run for the White House again.
    
12. 
    Leaders of the main opposition Congress party, which had previously governed all three states, were in shock. But the party did retain power in New Delhi, India's capital, by a large majority.
    
13. 
    Mr Duhalde has immense sway in Congress and in the recent elections increased his own bloc in the lower house to about 40 seats, thanks to an overwhelming victory in his native Buenos Aires province.
    
14. 
    The Social Democrats took 30.5 per cent of the vote with the Christian Democrats polling 47.2 per cent to command an absolute majority in the Hamburg parliament.
    
15. 
    He was freely and fairly elected twice in Haiti, and transferred power peaceably to his successor in 1996 – unique achievements in a land always governed by murderous dictators and military despots. He served from February 1991 until the military deposed him eight months later, finished his five-year term after the United States restored him in October 1994, and won re-election in 2000.
    
16. 
    The Democratic Party gained just one seat, while the pro-democracy camp overall added three to reach a total of 25 seats, falling far short of the hoped-for majority.
    
17. 
    The party beat even its own most optimistic expectations to capture almost 28 per cent of the vote, according to exit polls and early results. This was 5.2 percentage points ahead of the 22.5 per cent it gained in the last elections in 1999, when it became the dominant political force.
    
18. 
    Now Mr Rove has guaranteed himself a place in the pantheon of Republican heroes. He saved Mr Bush from suffering his father’s fate as a one-term president and has given his boss a popular mandate and a far greater margin of victory than in 2000.
    
19. 
    Gordon Brown and other senior ministers whom he consulted talked Mr Blair out a course of action which they argued would leave him as a lame duck leader and open the way to six months of internal Labour Party turmoil and bitter leadership contest.
    
20. 
    Mr Wade, who is among the few African leaders to have arrived in power by defeating a sitting president at the ballot box, has been one of Nepad's (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) chief promoters.
    
21. 
    The latest polls show that the party, whose only platform is to support Mr Putin's policies, is way ahead of all its rivals and will win a landslide victory on Sunday in the contest for 450 Duma seats.
    
22. 
    Vojislav Kostunica, the law professor who led the putsch toppling Mr Milosevic three years ago, is favourite to become the next prime minister.
    

1. 
   Today Germany, and Europe, are wondering whether Frau Merkel – if she can form a government coalitian – really represent a fresh start or whether she will be an interim chancellor, a brief interruption in the country’s steep decline… In the coming weeks, the Germans will find out how much Maggie there is in Angie.
   
2. 
   With his landslide majority, and the introduction of radical reform to limit debate, Mr Blair has effectively turned the Commons into a rubber stamp for Government legislation.
   
3. 
   The danger of complacency for Labour is illustrated by the fact that nearly half of the party’s voters, 43%, expect them to win easily, compared with only 13% of Conservative supporters. Only 8% expect a hung parliament and even fower, 5% a Tory victory.
   
4. 
   Romano Prodi, who hopes to replace Mr Berlusconi as prime minister, said the amendment was “tantamount to theft” and threatened to paralyse the legislature unless it was dropped.
   
5. 
   But the key issue is whether Frau Merkel can gain enough votes to secure the necessary absolute majority in tomorrow’s vote. She is pitted not only against the Social Democrats but also the Greens and the new Left party led by Oskar Lafontaine, the Chancellor’s arch-rival and former finance minister.
   
6. 
   The decision to allow other candidates to stand against the 77-year-old leader, who has been returned unopposed in four previous elections, was prompted by pressure from Washington and mounting internal dissatisfaction with the Ruling Democratic Party.
   
7. 
   But officials representing her rival in the Nov. 8 runoff, football superstar Geoge Weah, said he still refused to concede defeat.
   
8. 
   The Social Democrats face 14 elections this year – state, local, regional, presidential and European – in which each defeat will signal a weakening of Herr Schröder’s grip on power.
   
9. 
   Disillusionment among voters seems likely to produce a far lower turnout than the 67 per cent who turned out for a reformist landslide in the last parliamentary elections four years ago.
   
10. 
    When Aznar was first elected president, in 1996, he was forced to govern in a coalition with regional parties. But four years ago, the Popular Party won an absolute majority and that appears to have fed an intransigence in dealing with regional leaders.
    
11. 
    Analysts said that the democratic movement also suffered because of its poor planning and the idiosyncratic voting system, which ensures that no single party can win a majority of seats, even if it wins most votes.
    
12. 
    A PP victory, though, is not assured. The Socialists, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, won a majority of the popular vote in May's municipal and regional elections. Since then, embarrassing internal divisions have prevented their taking control of the Madrid region – where the election will be rerun next month – but they could still put up a fight next year. The PP will find it hard to repeat the absolute majority it achieved in 2000.
    
13. 
    Everything Vladimir Putin does these days is perceived as a move to further consolidate his power. Certainly, he has no shortage of it, with a rubber-stamp Parliament in place and a certain landslide in the presidential election on March 14.
    
14. 
    In this way Mr Chirac would keep ammunition in reserve for someone to run the executive until the current legislature ends in 2007.
    
15. 
    Then the Conservatives delivered the prime minister another boost. Once among Europe's most formidable political operators, the Tories – who held office for almost two decades before Mr Blair's 1997 landslide win – have yet to rebuild themselves as a credible alternative. In two by-elections last month the party came third – despite a big swing against Labour.
    
16. 
    The Conservatives are trailing far behind the Labour opposition in all polls and are widely expected to be voted out of office on May 1.
    
17. 
    Mr Nader won a place on the ballot in 43 states and Washington DC four years ago, when Mr Bush won by such narrow margins in the crucial states of Florida and New Hampshire that Mr Gore would have won without Mr Nader's candidacy. Exit polls showed that almost half of Mr Nader's votes would otherwise have gone to the Democrats. In Florida, where the result was so close it had to be decided in court, Mr Nader won 97,488 votes while Mr Bush defeated Mr Gore by 537.
    
18. 
    However, Mr Chavez was yesterday basking in the international recognition of his controversial victory, with numerous international governments sending him messages of congratulations.
    
19. 
    But the failure of Yabloko and the Union of Right forces to agree on a single candidate also shows the weakness of democratic forces in Russia and their lack of coordination, which was the main reason behind their defeat in the parliamentary elections.
    
20. 
    Unofficial results from parliamentary elections in the former Yugoslav republic showed reformists had captured 59 per cent of parliamentary seats, enough to form a broad ruling coalition.
    
21. 
    But if Mr Kwasniewski's nominee cannot muster a parliamentary majority, the likely result will be early elections.
    
22. 
    European governments have decided to turn a blind eye to reports of systematic vote-rigging in Albania’s general election and in effect endorse the overwhelming but almost certainly fraudulent victory claimed by President S.B. and his Democratic Party.
    

HDZ leaders quickly moved to assuage international concerns that a return to power by the party could injure effort (...) in the Balkans.

(...) showed the HDZ winning at least 65 (...) in Croatia's 160-seat parliament, more than twice (...) won by Mr Racan's Social Democrats, and more than his (...) five parties combined. But Mr Racan was quoted by local media late yesterday as saying his Social Democrats might still find a way to rule in coalition with moderate (...).

Without (...) in parliament, the HDZ needs coalition partners (...). Mr Zuzul, tipped to become Croatia's top diplomat in a HDZ-led cabinet, told the FT President Stjepan Mesic must invite the party to lead. "Anything else would be against the opinion of the Croatian people," he said.

The party's win continues a trend of electoral comebacks for Balkan nationalists. A week ago, a radical nationalist candidate prevailed in Serbian (...), later (...). Nationalists in Bosnia, including its (...) of the HDZ, took control after a strong showing in (...) a year ago.

But Mr Sanader and Mr Zuzul eschew the "nationalist" epithet, insisting: "Croatian national interests are best served within the EU."

Hong Kong dealt a blow to China's communist leadership yesterday after democrats routed pro-Beijing forces in a stunning (...) in the former British colony.

In the first elections since huge anti-government demonstrations rocked the territory in July, the democrats delivered a big reverse for the embattled Hong Kong Government and its (...).

The humiliation of the Democratiс Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DАВ) has left pro-Beijing forces in disarray, with Tsang Yok-sing, the DAB leader, offering last night (...).

Yeung Sum, chairman of the Democratic Party (DP), said that the results reflected frustration with Tung Chee-hwa, the Hong Kong Chief Executive, and called for (...) for his (...) in 2007.

(...) and political (...) had widely predicted that the DAB would hold its vote because of its formidable (...) organisation and a (...) vote. But the elections to the district councils, which hold little real power, became a litmus test for the Government's popularity and people's democratic ambitions. A total of 1,065,363 voters (...) on Sunday, far outstripping the 816,503 who voted in 1999 and boosting (...) to 44 per cent, compared with 36 per cent four years ago.

The Democratic Party won 95 of 120 (...) that its candidates (...) in the district councils; the DAВ won just 64 of its 206 contests.

For the DP, this represented a nine-seat increase on 1999, while the DAB saw a slump of nearly 20 seats from its (...) of 83 seats four years ago. Of a total of 400 seats, only 326 (...).

The (…) Council, which is Hong Kong's parliament, is only partially elected and the Chief Executive is "elected" by a Beijing-appointed committee.
IV. Replace the words in brackets with their English equivalents in the
necessary form:
a) (Находящиеся у власти) Socialists in Greece
(признают поражения) in national elections
ATHENS: Greece's conservatives appeared victorious Sunday (на выборах в парламент) to determine who will steer the country through preparations for the Athens Olympics this summer and tricky (переговоры) with Turkey over the fate of Cyprus.

The Socialist leader (признал поражение) as (опросы общественного мнения при выходе с избирательных участков) broadcast by Greece's NET state television network gave (правоцентристская) New Democracy party 45.3 percent and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, better known as Pasok, 41.5 percent.

Other (опросы) aired by private television stations gave the conservatives (отрыв) of as much as five percentage points. Yet with only a fraction of (бюллетени) counted, analysts said it was possible that Pasok could close the gap, but not enough to pull out a victory.

Greece's Socialist leader, George Papandreou (признал поражение).

The vote ended Pasok's decade-long control of the country and was another snub against socialist governments in Europe.

(Явка избирателей) appeared to be (высокая), as millions of Greeks defied frosty-temperatures, some traveling to remote hamlets and islands (чтобы проголосовать).

Thousands of overseas Greeks also returned to vote in their ancestoral birthplaces in what analysts called one of the most crucial (предвыборные гонки) since the fall of the military junta in 1974.

Ultimately, the choice Greeks faced was one between the scions of two political dynasties that have dominated the country for decades.

"Today, we decide on our future," said Costas Caramanlis, leader of New Democracy and nephew of (бывший премьер-министр) who restored democracy after (падение, крах) of a seven-year military dictatorship in 1974.
b)

Uruguay Socialists Win Historic Poll
Montevideo, Uruguay – Uruguay's left celebrated its first (победа на президентских выводах) into the wee hours Monday while (предварительные результаты выборов) indicated Tabare Vazquez would win and his main (соперники) (признали поражение по результатам опроса общественного мнения при выходе с избирательных участков).

With half of the votes (подсчитаны), the charismatic 64-year-old doctor was just short of the 50 percent needed to win in (первый тур выборов) Sunday. But he should surpass that level when more votes come in from the capital Montevideo, his stronghold and home to half of the country's voters.

Backed by encouraging (опросы общественного мнения) and projections, Vazquez (объявил себя победителем) a few hours after compulsory voting ended in the nation of 3.4 million.

By electing Vazquez, Uruguay joins the ranks of South American nations – Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela – which have chosen left-leaning leaders on platforms of poverty alleviation after a decade of U.S.-backed free-market policies that often ended in economic chaos.

Vazquez's Broad Front coalition – including Socialists, Communists, Social Democrats and a hugely popular former (партизанское движение) – was also headed toward (большинство) in both houses of Congress.

The election marked a radical departure from the last 170 years of rule by the two traditional parties, the Colorados and Blancos, blamed for aggravating the 1999-2003 crisis and destroying social benefits envied by the rest of Latin America.

(Правоцентристская) National Party or Blanco candidate Jorge Larranaga had 38 percent of the vote, while Guillermo Stirling of the centrist ruling Colorado Party (показал худший результат) with 11 percent. Both (признали поражение) and (исключили необходимость проведения второго тура).

V. Translate the headlines:
A.

1. 
   koizumi wins his gamble with a landslide
   
2. 
   Kerry’s army is left bruised and baffled by knife-edge defeat.
   
3. 
   Ex-dictator picked as Benin president
   
4. 
   Battling UK premier looks to third poll win
   
5. 
   Swiss far-right poll success set to strain ties with EU
   
6. 
   Haider sets sights on an electoral victory
   
7. 
   Beijing’s election triumph forces rethink
   
8. 
   Bush seals second term
   
9. 
   Kuwaiti vote likely to give government a majority
   
10. 
    Nicaragua poll results delay
    
11. 
    Mubarak’s party wins big majority in runoff
    

1. 
   Mubarak secures 88% of Egypt vote
   
2. 
   Victor vows to remake JAPAN
   
3. 
   Bush and Kerry Pin Hopes on a clear victory
   
4. 
   Schröder is rocked by Hamburg election fiasco
   
5. 
   Haider’s star ascends with victory in Austria
   
6. 
   Nicaragua’s right hails poll victory
   
7. 
   Schröder blames reforms for defeat
   
8. 
   Putin’s power play for big election victory
   
9. 
   Incumbent Socialists concede defeat
   
10. 
    Bush back into the White House
    
11. 
    moderates claim a big victory in polls
    

Хамид Карзай был объявлен победителем президентских выборов, прошедших 9 октября этого года. По официальным данным, за тогда еще временного президента страны проголосовало более 60% избирателей. Его ближайший конкурент, министр образования Юнус Кануни, набрал всего 18%. Противники Карзая попытались опротестовать итоги выборов, указывая на многочисленные нарушения в ходе голосования и подсчета голосов, однако потом почти все они отказались от претензий, а специально созданная для проверки международная комиссия сочла обнаруженные нарушения несерьезными и признала результаты выборов.

В целом по стране Буш обошел Керри на 3% (51% против 48%), или примерно 3,5 млн голосов (58,6 млн против 55,1 млн).

Уже ночью было известно, что Буш победил в 28 штатах, консолидировав 254 голоса выборщиков, а Керри «взял» 19 штатов и Колумбию, совокупно дающих 252 голоса.

Однако окончательно итоги выборов решились в штате Огайо (20 голосов выборщиков). На 20.00 МСК Буш опережал там Керри примерно на 138 000. Но демократы долгое время заявляли, что еще не все голоса в штате подсчитаны и у их кандидата есть шанс на победу. Также не были подсчитаны голоса в штатах Айова (семь голосов) и Нью-Мексико (пять голосов). Но результат в этих штатах уже не мог повлиять на исход выборов: 12 их голосов не давали ни Бушу ни Керри в сумме с уже собранными необходимых 270.

В 2000 г. Буш одержал победу в 30 штатах и собрал 271 голос. Всего за него проголосовало 50,4 млн избирателей, а Гор, хотя и получил в целом 50,9 млн голосов, имел в коллегии только 266 голосов. Ключевым штатом тогда была Флорида, результаты выборов в которой посчитывали и оспаривали в судах четыре недели.
c) БЛЭРОВА ПОБЕДА

Для лидера лейбористов Тони Блэра победа на выборах может стать пирровой: даже многие соратники стремятся отправить британского премьера на покой.

Уже к утру 6 мая, дню рождения премьер-министра Тони Блэра, стало ясно, что в предшествующие сутки британцы оставили его на прежней работе. Лейбористская партия впервые в истории выиграла парламентские выборы третий раз подряд, и именно ей предстоит сформировать правительство страны на предстоящие четыре года. Сам именинник войдет в историю как первый лидер лейбористов, оставшийся на своем посту на третий срок. Тони Блэр имеет шанс побить рекорд бывшего лидера консерваторов Маргарет Тэтчер, пребывавшей у власти одиннадцать с половиной лет. Если он, конечно, не решит досрочно передать бразды правления более популярному и в стане лейбористов, и в стране министру финансов Гордону Брауну. Основания для этого имеются – война в Ираке и прочие непопулярные решения Блэра привели к падению его личного рейтинга и стоили партии нескольких десятков мест в палате общин.

Из 646 мест лейбористы получили 354. Лейбористы потеряли 47 кресел в нижней палате, и теперь им будет гораздо сложнее проводить свои законодательные инициативы. Многие из традиционных сторонников партии разочарованы решением Блэра ввязаться в крайне непопулярную в Британии иракскую кампанию. Некоторые эксперты и вовсе уверены, что для действующего премьера эта победа – пиррова: не слишком убедительные результаты на выборах могут заставить его уже в ближайшее время покинуть пост лидера лейбористов и главы британского правительства.

Консерваторы, напротив, заметно укрепили свои позиции в парламенте: они получили 197 мест, отобрав часть мандатов у лейбористов и либерал-демократов (четыре года назад у консерваторов было 166 мест). Тем не менее лидер консерваторов Майкл Говард уже объявил о своей отставке. Либерал-демократы увеличили свое присутствие в парламенте на 11 мест, теперь их 62.


VII. Comment on the cartoon.

a)	b)
“No need to leave your towel. The Germans are all watching the election”