Conservatives face election charges (Reuters)

OTTAWA (Reuters) – In an embarrassing development for the Conservative government, four senior party officials have been charged with violating financing rules during the election campaign that brought it to power in 2006.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections, the nonpartisan officer who is responsible for ensuring compliance with federal election rules, is also bringing charges against the Conservative Party itself.

The news broke ahead of what many political observers expect will be an election early this year. The minority government needs the backing of at least one opposition party to pass key legislation, such as next month's budget, and that is far from certain. Should the budget be defeated, a new election would be called immediately.

Polls indicate the Conservatives would retain power if an election were held now, albeit with another minority.

Elections Canada, the overall body supervising federal elections, said in a statement on Friday the four officials had willfully broken the $18.3 million spending limit placed on political parties during federal campaigns.

The agency contends the party had illegally assigned national advertising expenditures to local candidates, who have their own separate campaign spending accounts. In 2008, police raided Conservative headquarters looking for evidence.

In a civil case last year regarding these advertising expenditures, the Federal Court ruled that the local Conservative candidates had not broken election financing rules, but Elections Canada is appealing the ruling.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, asked about the story in a news conference in Halifax, played down what he termed "administrative charges."

Querying why the Conservatives had been singled out, he said: "Our party followed the same steps as the other political parties."

In fact, anyone found guilty of the latest charges could face jail time. The current charges are being laid under the Canada Elections Act, and the first court hearing will be on March 18.

"They don't fall under the criminal code, but they are certainly not 'administrative'," said Dan Brien, spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has since appointed to the Senate two of the four campaign officials who were named on Friday.

The Liberal Party said the charges were the latest sign of scandal in a government that won power promising to be more accountable.

"This is a million-dollar scam. It's not small potatoes," Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff charged in a news conference on a campaign-style swing he was making in the Toronto area.

($1=$0.98 Canadian)

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Randall Palmer; editing by Rob Wilson)

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Ireland counts votes in post-bailout election (AFP)

DUBLIN (AFP) – Irish authorities counted the ballots Saturday after reports of a big turnout as voters vented their anger over the eurozone nation's widely-loathed international financial bailout.

Initial exit polls from Friday's election were due out at 8:00 am (0800 GMT), with voters expected to expel the ruling Fianna Fail party and make Prime Minister Brian Cowen's government the first victim of the eurozone debt crisis.

State media reported predictions of a turnout of around 70 percent of the 3.1 million people eligible to vote as people flocked to the ballot box to show their fury over the collapse of the "Celtic Tiger" economy.

Counting was due to start at 9:00 am and full results are not expected until late Saturday or Sunday. Polling stations closed at 10 pm on Friday.

The leader of the main opposition Fine Gael party, former teacher Enda Kenny, 59, is poised to become the new taoiseach, or prime minister, with a promise to renegotiate the terms of Ireland's massive debts.

Fine Gael has a massive lead in pre-election polls with 38-40 percent compared with Fianna Fail's 15 percent.

But opinion polls suggest Fine Gael will not win a majority in the 166-seat Dail, or lower house of parliament, and may have to form a coalition with Labour, which is on 18 percent support.

In November, Ireland was forced to go cap in hand to the European Union and International Monetary Fund for an 85-billion-euro ($115-billion) bailout after a debt crisis centred on the banks threatened to spiral out of control.

At the centre of problem was a housing bubble.

It was the second eurozone nation after Greece to seek help and the deal was widely viewed as a humiliation, just three years after Ireland was the envy of the world for the strength of its economy.

Kenny, who voted in Mayo in western Ireland with his daughter Aoibhinn, a first-time voter, has promised to "hit the ground running" if he takes office.

He has already visited Brussels and Berlin to discuss amending the bailout terms, notably the "punitive" 5.8 percent interest rate and the cost of restructuring Ireland's banks.

The EU has indicated it might review the deal, but Dublin is under pressure to cut its ultra-low 12.5 percent corporate tax rate in return -- a rate Kenny says is vital for Ireland's economy.

Polls show 82 percent of voters want the bailout renegotiated but more than half of these accept that it will not be although many cannot see a way out.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail struggled to avoid an electoral wipeout after 14 years in power, as newspapers demanded punishment for the country's woes.

"Your Day of Revenge -- Kick Them in the Ballots", headlined the Irish Daily Star, while the Irish Sun said: "Downfail. It's time to dump this rotten lot."

Fianna Fail is led by ex-foreign minister Micheal Martin, who took over in January after Cowen quit over his handling of the economic crisis. Cowen is not standing for re-election.

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Yoweri Museveni wins another disputed Uganda election (The Christian Science Monitor)

Kampala, Uganda – After 25 years in power, veteran Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni just seems to be getting more and more popular.
Uganda’s Electoral Commission announced Sunday that Mr. Museveni had won Friday’s disputed presidential election with 68 percent of the vote. That's up from the 59 percent he claimed in 2006 and nearly three times more than his nearest rival, his former personal physician Kizza Besigye, who got 26 percent.
The result was “a great victory,” said Amama Mbabazi, secretary general of Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement, immediately after the announcement at the official tallying center in Kampala’s Nelson Mandela stadium. And the Museveni supporters who quickly lined the road from the stadium seemed to agree.
But Mr. Besigye – who was challenging Museveni for the third time running – begged to differ.
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Shortly before the official results were released he told a press conference that he was already rejecting the electoral commission’s tally. After saying throughout the campaign that a skewed voter registry and partisan electoral commission made the vote “fundamentally flawed,” Besigye produced a list of complaints – from rampant voter bribery, to ballot stuffing and military intimidation – that he said proved the elections had been systematically rigged.The electoral commission denied the allegation.
“We are rejecting the leadership that is emerging out of this election.” Besigye said. “We are not willing to put up with an illegitimate president.”
No Egypt-style protests?But after warning for weeks that a rigged election could spark Egypt-style revolt, one thing he did not do was call his supporters onto the street for mass protests.
After failing to get the results of previous polls overturned in court, Besigye ruled out going to court and said protests were an option. First, though, he said he would be consulting with “political actors, religious leaders, civil society, and the public to determine how to bring an end to the illegitimate government.â€
Besigye's parallel tally problemsBesigye had hoped to release his own tally of the results ahead of the official announcement in contravention of government orders not to do that.
One hundred and fifty students were set up in the unofficial tally center at a guest house in an undisclosed location in Kampala. But the location did not remain a secret, as plain clothed security officers visited and soldiers briefly surrounded the hostel. Meanwhile, a text message system to deliver the results was disrupted, meaning that the opposition results were severely delayed.
As the election commission whizzed through the data, Besigye’s count lagged behind and by Sunday morning only 20 percent of polls had been counted by his supporters. That tally put Museveni at 62 percent but opposition activists were at pains to point out that data had not been received from opposition strongholds in northern Uganda.
While Besigye’s post-election planning was going awry, foreign election observers said that there had been serious problems with the polls.
A statement from the European Union observer mission said that the level playing field had been severely compromised by Museveni’s overusing his powers of incumbency, while bribery – mostly from the ruling party – had been widely observed and the voting procedure had been poor or very poor in 30 percent of cases.
But with momentum slipping away from the opposition and officials handing Museveni another 5-year term, this may be the end of the road for Besigye, says Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a political scientist at Makerere’s University.
“It is now seems more likely that Museveni will stand again in 2016,” Mr. Golooba-Mutebi says. “As things stands, I do not think that we will see Besigye stand again.”
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Harper talks to NDP leader Layton as election threatens (Reuters)

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed the upcoming budget with the leader of the opposition New Democratic Party on Friday, a meeting that could bring concessions that might avert an election this year.

Harper's Conservatives, re-elected in October 2008, have a minority of seats in the House of Commons and need the backing of one of three opposition parties to pass the budget bill in March. A defeat over the budget would force an election.

"Our talks were cordial and respectful. The prime minister offered no assurances, but I am confident that my proposals were received and well understood," NDP leader Jack Layton said in a statement afterwards, without saying there was any agreement.

The NDP is on the left of the political spectrum, but it has been seen as the only party that might agree to back the budget. It is trailing in the polls and Layton has been recovering from cancer and now has a fractured hip.

March 22 is the most likely date for presenting the budget, though the government has made no announcement.

Layton said he provided four practical proposals: taking the federal sales tax off home heating bills; boosting pension payments for low-income seniors; strengthening the Canada Pension Plan; and taking action to help the 5 million Canadians who do not have a family doctor.

"Our New Democrat record is clear. I am always ready to work with other party leaders to get immediate action for Canadian families," Layton said.

"If Mr. Harper wants to head into an election showing that he is unable to put the needs of Canadians ahead of his own political goals, New Democrats are well prepared to fight that election."

Conservative sources said it was likely the government would be able to sweeten pensions for poor seniors. The government has also been taking some action to broaden the Canada Pension Plan, but the sources weren't sure if that would be enough for Layton.

Harper insists he does not want an election any time soon, but his lead in recent opinion polls is sufficiently strong that he may not be inclined to make too many concessions.

"The prime minister was pleased to hear Mr. Layton's views," Dimitri Soudas, Harper's communications director, said in a statement released after the meeting. "As the prime minister has stated publicly, this is not the time for an opportunistic election."

(Reporting by Randall Palmer; editing by Frank McGurty)

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Belarus jails election protester for four years (Reuters)

MINSK (Reuters) – A Belarus court Thursday sentenced an opposition activist to four years in a top-security jail for taking part in mass unrest during a rally last December against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Vasily Parfenkov, 27, was the first to be tried of about 30 people held after a police crackdown on a December 19 protest rally in Minsk and who include four opposition presidential candidates.

The prosecution had asked for a six-year sentence.

The police action triggered fresh Western sanctions against Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet republic since 1994 and whose re-election was denounced as fraudulent by the opposition and international monitors.

Judge Olga Komar, handing down sentence after a speedy one-day trial, said Parfenkov, campaign manager to one of the main opposition presidential candidates, had been part of "lawless crowd" which had tried to break into an official government building.

Parfenkov earlier had acknowledged taking part in the December 19, but denied breaking the glass windows of an official building that some people in the crowd had attacked on the night.

Authorities have since used television footage of the incident to substantiate claims of a Western-inspired coup attempt against Lukashenko.

Ales Belyatski, a prominent human rights campaigner, said the outcome was a "bad signal" for the four presidential candidates who are among those awaiting trial.

"If they are going to deal as harshly as this with a simple activist (like Parfenkov) then it has to be assumed that the next sentences of those who are accused of organizing unrest will be even harsher. It is a bad signal above all for the former presidential candidates," said Belyatski, head of the human rights Vesna (Spring) 96 website.

Three presidential candidates are still being held and include Andrei Sannikov of the "For a European Belarus" movement.

Vladimir Neklyayev, a 64-year-old poet and head of the "Tell the Truth" movement and for whom Parfenkov worked, is under house arrest, but may go on trial.

(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Richard Balmforth)

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Belarus jails election protester for four years (Reuters)

MINSK (Reuters) – A Belarus court Thursday sentenced an opposition activist to four years in a top-security jail for taking part in mass unrest during a rally last December against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Vasily Parfenkov, 27, was the first to be tried of about 30 people held after a police crackdown on a December 19 protest rally in Minsk and who include four opposition presidential candidates.

The prosecution had asked for a six-year sentence.

The police action triggered fresh Western sanctions against Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet republic since 1994 and whose re-election was denounced as fraudulent by the opposition and international monitors.

Judge Olga Komar, handing down sentence after a speedy one-day trial, said Parfenkov, campaign manager to one of the main opposition presidential candidates, had been part of "lawless crowd" which had tried to break into an official government building.

Parfenkov earlier had acknowledged taking part in the December 19, but denied breaking the glass windows of an official building that some people in the crowd had attacked on the night.

Authorities have since used television footage of the incident to substantiate claims of a Western-inspired coup attempt against Lukashenko.

Ales Belyatski, a prominent human rights campaigner, said the outcome was a "bad signal" for the four presidential candidates who are among those awaiting trial.

"If they are going to deal as harshly as this with a simple activist (like Parfenkov) then it has to be assumed that the next sentences of those who are accused of organizing unrest will be even harsher. It is a bad signal above all for the former presidential candidates," said Belyatski, head of the human rights Vesna (Spring) 96 website.

Three presidential candidates are still being held and include Andrei Sannikov of the "For a European Belarus" movement.

Vladimir Neklyayev, a 64-year-old poet and head of the "Tell the Truth" movement and for whom Parfenkov worked, is under house arrest, but may go on trial.

(Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; Writing by Richard Balmforth)

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