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

МОСКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ИНСТИТУТ

МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ (УНИВЕРСИТЕТ) МИД РОССИИ

Кафедра английского языка № 1

Осетрова Е.Е.

Пособие по общественно-политическому переводу

ELECTIONS

Москва, 2012

Аннотация

Настоящее пособие является базовым пособием для студентов III курса факультета МО, изучающих аспект общественно-политический перевод. Цель пособия – введение и закрепление общественно-политической лексики по теме «Выборы», одной из наиболее актуальных тем современной политики, а также совершенствование переводческих навыков, умения выявлять «переводческие трудности». Тексты пособия основаны на материале англо-американской прессы и отражают важнейшие избирательные кампании последнего времени в России, США, Украине, Великобритании, Японии, Германии и других странах.

Автор выражает благодарность Леви Ю.Э. за помощь в составлении переводческих комментариев.

The leader of a military coup in 1982, Gen Rios Montt ruled Guatemala with an iron fist. A born-again evangelical Christian, he held power for 16 months before being ousted. It was during this period that many of the worst atrocities in Guatemala's 36-year civil war were committed. His "civil defence" patrols conscripted indigenous Indians and killed those who resisted. Whole villages were slaughtered if they were thought to be hostile or to have assisted leftwing guerrillas.

Although he has long since returned to politics as president of the congress, until this week Gen Rios Montt, 77, had been excluded from standing² for the presidency, and the constitutional court had upheld that ban. But two new members of the court, both close to the current president, Alfonso Portillo, have reversed that stance in a 4-3 vote, opening³ the way for him to run on November 9.

Gen Rios Montt said on television this week that the decision was "an expression of the professional spirit, character and dignity of independent justices". He already has his campaign slogan, "I am Guatemala".

"Guatemala's government appears condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past," said Amnesty International yesterday.

This week the US embassy in Guatemala and the state department indicated that the election of Gen Rios Montt would create "difficulties" for the US. He also faces charges of genocide in Spain because a number of Spanish citizens were killed during his time in power.

Polls show Gen Rios Montt third in the race. He enjoys some support from people worried about street crime. But there is also opposition: when he appeared in the town of Rabinal last month, he was stoned by protesters, including Mayan Indians whose relatives had been massacred during his rule.

Russia's leading liberal parties have failed to nominate a joint candidate for the country's presidential elections next year in the wake of their defeat in the parliamentary elections earlier this month.

Grigory Yavlinsky, a veteran of the country's democratic movement and the leader of the liberal Yabloko party, said his party would not take part in the presidential poll on March 14 on the grounds that elections in Russia were "neither free nor fair".

Mr Yavlinsky's decision not to run for the presidency follows suggestions from the Communist party that it might also boycott the presidential elections after coming under heavy fire from the state-owned television channels in the run-up to the parliamentary polls.

Vladimir Putin, who enjoys a popularity rating of almost 80 per cent, appears certain to be re-elected for a second term next year, but the boycotting of the election by the leading political parties could overshadow his victory.

The Union of Right Forces, led by Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russian privatisation, and Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, will decide next month whether to take part in the presidential election. Both Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces failed to get past a 5 per cent threshold to get into parliament.

Atlanta – John Kerry refrained Tuesday from predicting a sweep of 10 states that could drive rival John Edwards from the race for the Democratic nomination. However, he told transportation workers in Georgia he expects to return to the state for the fall campaign against U.S. President George W. Bush.

Both senators campaigned in Atlanta at the beginning "Super Tuesday", the primaries and caucuses in California, New York, Ohio, Georgia, Minnesota, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont that provide more than half the 2,162 delegates needed to win the nomination.

Kerry has won the bulk of delegates having won 18 of the first 20 contests. Edwards has won only one state, South Carolina, and that was nearly a month ago. Delegates will pick an eventual candidate at the party's June convention to run against Bush in November.

Edwards, a U.S. senator from North Carolina, pledged to stay in the race "until I'm nominated", but said in Ohio on Monday that he recognized that, "At some point, I've got to start getting more delegates or I'm not going to be the nominee".

A failure by Edwards to win any Tuesday races would bring enormous pressure to bear on him from Democratic leaders to step aside. Kerry hoped to finish Edwards off on Tuesday so he could turn his full attention to Bush and the general election.

John Edwards ended his presidential bid yesterday looking far from a loser, having transformed himself during a 13-month campaign into a political star who many Democrats believe will make a powerful running-mate for John Kerry.

Despite denying for months that he harbours ambitions for the vice-presidency, Mr Edwards's formal⁴ decision to quit the Democratic primary race only fuelled speculation that his Southern roots, charismatic populism and clear ability to appeal to moderates makes him hard for Mr Kerry to ignore.

Last night, at the school attended by his late 16-year-old son, Wade, killed in a car accident in 1996, Mr Edwards prepared to announce formally his withdrawal. Aides said yesterday, after he had been heavily defeated by Mr Kerry in Tuesday's ten-state Super Tuesday series of primaries, that the campaign was over.

Mr Edwards, 50, a first-term North Carolina senator, bows out of one of the Democrats' most successful primary seasons. Despite winning only one state, South Carolina, he played a key role in making the contest relatively bloodless and optimistic, ensuring that the rival candidates concentrated most of their fire on President Bush rather than each other.

On the stump, before and after Iowa, Mr Edwards was relentlessly upbeat and optimistic, refusing to attack his rivals. Instead, in speeches that fused an economic message with an often electrifying popular eloquence, he denounced the "two Americas" that Democrats claim exist under Mr Bush, and played up his Southern appeal.

Mr Edwards's influence on the race after Iowa became so powerful that the Democratic rivals hardly dared to attack each other again. This has left the perception of an unusually united party and a nominee, Mr Kerry, relatively unscathed to challenge Mr Bush.

Mr Edwards also appealed strongly to independents and moderate Republicans, a key voter group seen as one of Mr Kerry's vulnerabilities. Mr Edwards, the son of a mill-worker, has also consistently done better than any other Democrat in appealing to voters who believe "he cares about people like me".

These factors have left many Democrats believing that a Kerry-Edwards ticket is irresistible, particularly among those who contend that the party must compete in the South – "my backyard", as Mr Edwards calls it – to retake the White House.
Optional texts
5. Republican and Democrat strategists believe that energising their grassroots support and getting "the base to the polls is the key to victory, more than targeting swing voters, the fabled "soccer mums" so sought after during the Clinton years. This is because pollsters report that America is still bitterly and evenly split along party lines after the 2000 election, with a "swing" element of only about 10 per cent.

To fight the election, Mr Bush will have the largest election war chest in history. He has already raised $105 million (£60 million), has set a target of $170 million and could potentially have more than $200 million to spend against his opponent. Unlike his Democrat rival, who will need enormous political and financial capital to beat the challenges of eight rivals, Mr Bush is running without any serious challenge from within his own party.

Not only does this enhance his already massive financial advantage, it also gives him an historical edge. All recent incumbent presidents who ran for re-election without a primary challenger, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, easily won re-election. Conversely, every incumbent except Richard Nixon who ran for re-election after a primary challenge from within the party were defeated. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr faced challenges from within their party and subsequently lost the election. Lyndon Johnson was so damaged after the early primary votes in 1968 that he quit the race.


6. Politics of tradition in land of the rising sons

For the first time in ten years, Junichiro Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faces a credible challenger, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the general election tomorrow.

For the first time, too, the parties have presented Western-style election campaigns. Yet, beneath the slick exterior, there is much about Japanese politics that is deeply old-fashioned.

For all their talk of national policies, Mr Koizumi and the DPJ leader, Naoto Kan, will win or lose in hundreds of local constituency battles, fought on mundanely local issues. And a large proportion of their candidates have been selected not on the basis of their political skills or popular appeal, but because they are the sons and daughters of other professional politicians.

From Tony and Hilary Benn to George Bush Sr and Jr, parent-and-child politicians are found all over the world. But in few places is politics as much of a family business as in Japan.

"It's as if the L in LDP stands for 'legacy'," the left-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper complained in a recent editorial. "Politics should not be like some traditional performing art that is conveniently passed from parent to child."

Of 323 candidates running for the LDP, 116 are in areas once represented by an older relative. In the previous parliament, two out of five MPs were hereditary, including some of Japan's most powerful and popular leaders.

Three out of the past four Japanese Prime Ministers inherited their seats. Both Mr Koizumi, the present leader, and his chief sidekick, Shinzo Abe, are third-generation MPs who succeeded their fathers and grandfathers. Kenji Kosaka, a 57-year-old LDP member, is one of a select group of fourth-generation MPs – his great-grandfather was elected to his constituency in Japan's first ever Imperial Diet, in 1890.

The uncomfortable truth is that, from a party's point of view, the sons, daughters, nephews, nieces and children-in-law of hereditary candidates are often the ones most likely to win. Successful candidates rely on highly organised support groups that canvass on their behalf and help voters to the polls on election day.

The child of a retiring MP has a ready-made support group, while political newcomers have to create them from scratch.

1. 
   Both Medvedev and Ivanov have been seen as potential presidential candidates in 2008, when Putin is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.
   
2. 
   George W. Bush's formidable re-election machine lost no time in training its sights on the putative Democratic nominee John Kerry yesterday, unveiling television ads in key battle ground states.
   
3. 
   Iran's powerful Guardian Council said yesterday that it stood by a decision to disqualify thousands of reformist candidates from standing in next month's parliamentary elections.
   
4. 
   Bush won the Delaware Republican presidential primary, but McCain grabbed a quarter of the votes without campaigning in the state. Steve Forbes pulled out of the Republican race after grabbing only 20% of ballots.
   
5. 
   The arrest warrant came as Gen Wiranto prepared to announce formally today that he has recruited the deputy chairman of Indonesia’s human rights commission to be his running mate, in what is seen as an effort to clean up a tainted human rights record.
   
6. 
   Back in Moscow after campaigning for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, two prominent Kremlin – connected spindoctors sought to deflect criticism of their role by turning on Yanukovych, saying his criminal past had made their job very difficult.
   
7. 
   The latest Democrat to declare his bid for the White House attacked President George W. Bush's failings as a wartime leader, indicating a shift in the way the Democratic party is seeking to unseat the president.
   
8. 
   But Kerry can no longer count on the automatic platform provided by contested primaries to keep his name in the headlines. Bush now has a single, big target in Kerry, and can focus on him in the long months leading up to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July.
   
9. 
   Mr Kerry must look to Super Tuesday on March 2 to seal his bid, which means a month of testing, far-flung and expensive campaigning.
   
10. 
    Yuschenko, a liberal reformer interested in pushing the country closer to Europe, was expected to mount a strong challenge to Yanukovych, who has cultivated closer ties with the Kremlin, in what has proved to be a bitterly fought campaign.
    
11. 
    Intransigent but nervous abroad; cautious and circumscribed at home. This was a confident opening to Bush's re-election campaign. But the belligerence, the myopia and the long list of things that he did not say show that he is not secure on every flank.
    
12. 
    The build-up to the election including the barring of candidates and a boycott by two reformist parties – has exposed increasingly bitter divisions in Iran's political class.
    
13. 
    The Bush campaign announced the start of what is expected to be the most expensive advertising campaign in presidential history, with commercials devised to erase months of Democratic criticism by portraying President George W. Bush as a plain-spoken leader who steadied the nation after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
    
14. 
    John Kerry fired the opening shots of an eight-month presidential campaign yesterday, branding President Bush "the great divider" and vowing to remake America into a beacon for the rest of the world.
    
15. 
    Mr Bush's strategists, who consider the Massachussetts senator a serial flip-flopper, sent an e-mail to six million voters nationwide portraying him as too liberal and out of touch for middle America.
    
16. 
    Suddenly, instead of seizing the Democratic presidential nomination in record time, Dr Dean is struggling to survive. The New Hampshire primary next Thursday has become a contest that the former Vermont Governor simply has to win.
    
17. 
    John Kerry began the process of choosing a running-mate yesterday, opening the season of jostling by vice-presidential hopefuls and intense media speculation which is known as the “veepstakes”.
    
18. 
    Ivan Rybkin, the most vocal challenger to Vladimir Putin in next week’s elections, who injected a moment of drama into the presidential race when he disappeared for six days, yesterday withdrew his candidacy, saying that the contest was a “farce” and he had been subject to “illegal” pressure. The move leaves next Sunday’s presidential election with only three of the five original challengers to Mr Putin.
    
19. 
    Many Democrats are still angry that Mr Nader’s Green Party candidacy four years ago stole votes from Mr Gore. They have urged supporters to email Mr Nader begging him not to run.
    
20. 
    Bob Phillis, chief executive of the Guardian Media Group and author of the report, will recommend that more ministers brief the press and not leave the business of delivering the Government’s message to spindoctors.
    
21. 
    Mr Edwards, the most accomplished stump performer of the Democrat challengers, is viewed as the most viable rival to Mr Kerry.
    
22. 
    President Bush's State of the Union speech marked the start of his campaign for re-election.
    

1. 
   No date has yet been announced, and no one is officially running. But politicians from the Labour and Conservative parties are already behaving like bona fide candidates in a vicious campaign that, once again, has Prime Minister Tony Blair at its center.
   
2. 
   The challengers returned to Berlin yesterday for their end-of-campaign rallies after exhausting nationwide tours. Their voices were hoarse and the soft evening lighting could not conceal their fatigue. The Chancellor in particular resembled an exhausted boxer. He has completed more than 100 rallies during the summer, compared to 60 in the longer election campaign of 2002.
   
3. 
   Forsa estimates some 25 per cent of voters are still undecided, far more than at this point in the 2002 election. Many of the undecided are disgruntled Social Democrats. If the chancellor can change their minds before 6pm on Sunday he could save face: he could look forward not to power but at least to an honourable retirement.
   
4. 
   The prime minister's gamble to call a snap election over opposition to privatisation of the post office has paid off.
   
5. 
   When the Forum went out on the campaign trail it drew big crowds in the north, the West Nile region and in the west, which is Mr Museveni's base.
   
6. 
   Some analysts speculated that the president had acted to cut short the ambitions of his charismatic prime minister, who has long threatened to mutate into a powerful rival.
   
7. 
   Herr Schröder went on the stump as if he were still Chancellor with a record to defend and a new term ahead. He certainly did not look like a man voted out of power in the September 18 general election. By contrast, Frau Merkel is a winner so timid that she manages to appear like a loser.
   
8. 
   The death of a Liberal Democrat candidate five days before the election means that the first by-election of the new Parliament will be announced within days of its sitting.
   
9. 
   Jaafari, the man poised to succeed Ayad Allawi and become Iraq's first elected prime minister since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, is a popular politician who heads the country's oldest Shiite party, Dawa.
   
10. 
    A source from the rival Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq confirmed that its candidate, Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, had dropped out of the race.
    
11. 
    The exchanges mean that a sharply divided America faces one of its longest presidential campaigns. The accelerated primary process has produced a Democrat nominee earlier in the year than usual and Mr Bush has a record warchest.
    
12. 
    Mr Kerry's primary victory owed much to his claim that as a decorated Vietnam veteran he could credibly fight Mr Bush on national security.
    
13. 
    Many Democrats would like to see Mr Edwards on the ticket as Mr Kerry’s vice-presidential candidate, but Mr Kerry has left that open.
    
14. 
    Mr Gephardt returned home to Missouri overnight, his run for the presidency over, and his political career at an end after 33 years in Congress.
    
15. 
    While the bulk of Mr Kerry's attacks were directed at Mr Bush, as well as the "arrogance" of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy, he also sought to set himself apart from the other eight candidates for the Democratic nomination.
    
16. 
    The North Carolina senator, who is seeking to make his southern twang into an electoral asset, reminds voters at each stop in his stump speech: "The South is not George Bush's backyard. It is my backyard. And I will beat George Bush in my backyard."
    
17. 
    Iowa is considered a make-or-break state for Mr Gephardt, who has a strong organisation in the state and won the caucus there in 1988 when he last sought the nomination.
    
18. 
    Every forecast predicts that it will be an exceptionally close race, yet both the candidates and the news media are focusing exclusively on just the small number of toss-up states – no more than 12 and perhaps as few as six – that either President George W. Bush or John Kerry, the Democratic senator, could very well carry.
    
19. 
    This is mixed news for the Tories. Although their core vote is loyal, the Tory party at present appeals least to non-core or floating voters.
    
20. 
    In El Valle, voters keen to vote Mr Chavez out of office made their opinion heard.
    
21. 
    Hours after Mr Kerry's virtual coronation as Democratic nominee, the re-election campaign for Mr Bush and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, slipped into a higher gear.
    
22. 
    India's finance ministry yesterday relaunched a multi-million dollar publicity campaign to promote economic reforms which had been suspended by India's Election Commission in the run-up to this week's assembly polls.
    
23. 
    The Iowa caucus on January 19 will be the first big chance for voters to express their preferences for the Democratic presidential nomination. It will be followed eight days later by voting in New Hampshire -a pivotal state no candidate would dare to bypass.
    
24. 
    In recent times running mates have generally been chosen more for their ability to balance or enhance the overall appeal of the party ticket than for their geographical attributes.
    

1. 
   Mr Bush is said to talk to his father every day. Their conversations are private. But according to at least one person who knows the former president, the elder Mr Bush is in a "high state of anxiety" about the situation in Iraq and the possibility that his son could follow in his footsteps and lose his bid for re-election.
   
2. 
   Mr Bush suffered another embarrassment yesterday when an ousted member of his cabinet claimed that his former boss had planned to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq from the moment that he took office and long before the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
   
3. 
   The nation's veterans make up roughly 13 per cent of the electorate – a potentially enormous slice in such a closely contested race.
   
4. 
   Jorg Haider, the far-right nationalist and xenophobe whose presence in the government prompted the European Union to impose sanctions on Austria five years ago, has been campaigning hard lately in what many analysts have been predicting will be his political swan song, the end of his career as the European provocateur of the moment.
   
5. 
   He is the only leader of a parliamentary group who is standing, which allows him to be a candidate without seeking signatures. He has decided to run independently like Mr Putin, but without the administrative support the Russian president can command.
   
6. 
   Earlier, Kerry left the campaign trail and returned to the Senate to cast an unshrinking vote in favor of extending a 10-year ban on assault weapons that expires this year, and to accuse Bush of “walking away” from his 2000 campaign pledge to support its extension.
   
7. 
   John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, yesterday won a key endorsement in New Hampshire, giving a much-needed boost to his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in the early battleground state.
   
8. 
   Kerry said national security is a key campaign issue, but that Bush has misled the country on everything from weapons of mass destruction to the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
   
9. 
   While policy issues have been largely absent from a low-key campaign, negative attacks on rivals – what Russians call “black PR” – have been widespread.
   
10. 
    Conventional wisdom has Mr Edwards handily placed on Mr Kerry’s shoulder to become his running mate.
    
11. 
    The greatest compliment Mr Kerry has so far paid Mr Edwards is to pilfer the most successful parts of his stump speech.
    
12. 
    His prime-time address on the last night of the Republican Convention in New York offered an excellent opportunity to build on the momentum of the past month when Mr Kerry’s bid has faltered amid ferocious attacks on his character and record.
    
13. 
    But with her economic reforms blocked by Congress, she has made scant progress on the economy since taking power in 2001 and she broke a promise not to stand in yesterday’s election.
    
14. 
    Under the current constitution power would be transferred to the winner of a presidential election next October, and Mr Kuchma, who has already served two terms, is barred from running.
    
15. 
    The move is yet another blow for democracy in the former Soviet Union, coming days after President Lukashenko, the autocratic leader of Belarus, signalled his intention to change the Constitution in order to run for a third term.
    
16. 
    Reformers struggled to work together after Mr Milosevic was ousted.
    
17. 
    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would be barred from running in new elections if he were to lose a recall referendum that opponents want to hold later this year, according to a Supreme Court ruling released yesterday. The ruling boosts Venezuela's opposition which has been unable to agree on a candidate to run against Mr Chavez.
    
18. 
    So a question is in the air: Can Kerry, who spent 20 years in the Senate, and Edwards, who has been a senator for five, generate the kind of chemistry – that certain intangible something – that makes a presidential ticket click?
    
19. 
    Mr Haider’s latest triumph was the result of his personal charisma and a well-run campaign against weak opponents.
    
20. 
    But Mr Dean’s rivals say a presidential campaign is a marathon and, they add, a sprint start is not necessarily the best way to win.
    
21. 
    For Mr Kerry the decision of who to choose as a running mate is a mixture of political calculus and personal chemistry. He has hinted that the traditional “Southern strategy” for Democrats is outdated and that a running mate from the South and the need to win some southern states – with the exception of Florida – is not vital.
    
22. 
    The White House believes that its success in getting grassroots support to the polls was the key to victory in mid-term elections last year, when Republicans increased their majority in the House of Representatives and regained control of the Senate.
    
23. 
    A clear majority of all voters, including Labour, continue to believe that Blair relies too much on spin and public relations.
    

The Missouri congressman's departure followed a resounding failure to win the Democrat vote at the Iowa (...) whiсh he had to win to sustain his second shot at (...).

Analysts had portrayed Iowa as a two-horse (...) between Mr Gephardt and Howard Dean, but Mr Gephardt's negative targeting of his (...) seems to have backfired. He came an unexpected fourth behind the former Governor of Vermont on 11 per cent.

He returned home to St Louis yesterday, where he was due formally to announce his (...).

Mr Gephardt, who is in his fourteenth (...) in Congress, has announced that he will not (...) his seat again.
b) campaign, to stand (2), to boycott, four-year term, parliamentary
elections, to win re-election, nomination, to stand for re-election
Electorate's backing for Kremlin
spurs Putin (...) again
Vladimir Putin, Russian president, yesterday capitalised on the strong success of pro-Kremlin parties in the country's recent (...) to announce that he would (...) next March.

In comments during his annual televised question-and-answer session to the nation, Mr Putin kicked off his (...) with calls for further market-oriented economic reform combined with more effective government and a resurgent international role for Russia.

During more than 2 hours responding to a selection of more than 1.5m questions put by telephone, television and internet, Mr Putin reiterated his opposition to changing the constitution approved in 1993, which would limit him to one more (...).

Mr Putin stressed after his broadcast that he would not seek (...) as a presidential candidate on behalf of any parliamentary party, but would use the other option in the constitution of (...) by a signature campaign across the country.

His comments came as Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, two liberal democratic opposition parties that failed (...) to parliament, and the Communist party, which suffered a sharp set-back, said they might (...) the presidential elections.
c) competition, running mate, primary and caucus contests, nomina­
tion (2), to seek re-election, ticket, bid
Edwards is suspending his (...) for presidency
Senator John Edwards said Wednesday that he was suspending his campaign for the Democratic presidential (...) after winning just one of 30 (...) this year. His exit leaves Senator John Kerry, who won 27 of the 30 primaries and caucuses this year, with no major (...) for the Democratic Party's (...).

Edwards, a former trial lawyer who was elected to the Senate in 1998, has said he will not (...) this year. He would probably agree to be Kerry's (...) if asked to join the Democratic presidential (...), a campaign aide said.

Manda Mobutu, eldest son of Mobutu Sese Seko, the despised former dictator of Congo, has returned home after six years in exile, hoping to take part in (президентские выборы, намеченные на) 2005.

They are likely to pit Mr Mobutu against Joseph Kabila in a democratic (борьба, соревнование) intended to haul the mineral-rich country out of decades of war and misrule. It is the first to take place in the republic since independence from Belgium in 1960.

Mr Mobutu, 43, who (покинул) Kinshasa as (повстанцы) stormed the capital in 1997, is unlikely (вести предвыборную кампанию) on his father's record of 32 years in power, which saw some of the worst (зверства) and plunder of state resources in post-colonial Africa. Mr Mobutu said: "If the people choose to have another Mobutu lead them, it won't be a photocopy of the last one. There is no cloning in politics."

His father died in exile in Morocco of cancer four months after being overthrown by Laurent Kabila, the rebel turned autocrat. Kabila (сменил на посту его сын) after being assassinated in 2001.

Denying allegations that he had been supporting rebels trying (сместить) Mr Kabila, Mr Mobutu said that he felt obliged to come back and do something for his country. "Faced with all the suffering endured by our people, we can no longer stand by and watch our people starve to death," he added.

Mr Mobutu was greeted on his return to Kinshasa airport by 200 family members and supporters.

Last year in a gesture of (примирение), Mr Kabila offered to assist the Mobutu family in repatriating the former dictator's remains, so that he could be buried in the land of his ancestors, sparing him the shame of being buried in a foreign country "like a dog."

Zakim Shah, head of the electoral commission, told candidates and journalists gathered in the auditorium of Kabul's state TV station that 18 out of 23 prospective candidates (получили право баллотироваться) in the October 9 poll. Authorities disqualified three (кандидата на пост президента) because they did not fulfil technical requirements, while two others (отозвали свою кандидуру), he said.

The list published yesterday leaves the most prominent (соперники) to President Hamid Karzai's (попытка переизбрания) in the race: Yunis Qanooni, a sharp politician and a leader of the mainly ethnic Tajik Northern (Cоюз), which holds powerful seats in the cabinet; Mohammad Mohaqiq, who is expected to garner strong support among the minority Hazara population; and Abdul Rashid Dostum, a northern commander who leads the ethnic Uzbek Junbish party.

Masooda Jalal, a politician who was a candidate at the loya jirga, or grand council that elected Mr Karzai to lead the transitional administration, is one of two women on the ballot. The other, Shafiqa Habibi (баллотируется на пост вице-президента) on General Dostum' (список кандидатов).

Mr Shah said members of the public had filed dozens of objections to the candidacies of Mr Mohaqiq and Gen Dostum, as well as that of Karim Khalili, one of Mr Karzai's vice-presidential candidates.

Members of military groups are banned by law from (баллотироваться на к-л пост, выборную должность). The objections were waived, he said, after all three promised to appoint new leaders to their military units.

Speculation lingered yesterday on whether Mr Qanooni would stay in (гонка).

Talks continued among the Northern Tadjik leaders, who are potentially divided between support for Mr Qanooni and Ahmed Zia Masood, Mr Karzai’s (кандидат на пост вице-президента) and brother of the assassinated resistance leader, Ahmed Shah Masood.

1. 
   Asylum for ousted president
   
2. 
   GERMANY HEADS for early election
   
3. 
   rafsanjani agrees to stand in poll
   
4. 
   Spin wars whip up Uk election fever
   
5. 
   Kerry launches bid for Democratic presidency
   
6. 
   Former hostage to run for Ohio Senate
   
7. 
   Incumbents are favoured in elections
   
8. 
   Parliament endorses Putin’s nominee
   
9. 
   Candidates seek US war veterans’ hearts and votes
   
10. 
    The invisible challengers
    
11. 
    Zambian contest
    
12. 
    Brazilian leader set to seek seCONd term
    

1. 
   MugaBe vows to “Demolish” spindoctor turned rival
   
2. 
   Blair expected to call uk election
   
3. 
   shiites pick candidate to succeed allawi
   
4. 
   Putin rules out standing for thIrd term
   
5. 
   Opposition leader given clear run for presidency
   
6. 
   Bush campaign opens TV ad blitz
   
7. 
   Kerry crushes opponents to secure nomination
   
8. 
   Lebanon to vote on a further term for president
   
9. 
   Discord on German presidential bid
   
10. 
    Violence slows IraQ’s run-up to elections
    
11. 
    Curb spindoctors and lift veIL whitehall secrecy, says report
    
12. 
    Two Republicans left in election race
    

1. 
   Bush set to confirm White House bid
   
2. 
   Nominee approved
   
3. 
   Kerry: for Bush rIval, real test begins
   
4. 
   Vanishing Putin rival quits election
   
5. 
   Afgan president in no hurry to launch his election campaign
   
6. 
   Democrat dismay as Nader enters race to beAt Bush
   
7. 
   Dean credibility doubts give impetus to Kerry campaign
   
8. 
   Kerry grasps a new dawn in presidential race
   
9. 
   SPIN DOCTORS BLAME YANUKOVYCH
   
10. 
    KASHMIR OUSTING
    
11. 
    KERRY TAKES AIM AT BUSH AS PRIMARIES VICTORY LOOMS
    
12. 
    MUGABE TO BE RE-ELECTED AS RIVALS PULL OUT
    
13. 
    KERRY AND EDWARDS TAKE GLOVES OFF