Calderon leads knife-edge Mexico vote

Mexico's political future is poised on a knife-edge with two candidates - a pro-business conservative and a charismatic leftwinger - both claiming victory in the presidential election while the electoral authorities insist the result is too close to call.

A preliminary tally of 96% of the ballots cast on Sunday put Felipe Calder›n, of the governing centre-right National Action party, less than 1% ahead of the former Mexico City mayor Andr,s Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution party.

The country's top electoral official said this was not enough to declare a victor and announced that an official recount would begin on Wednesday. Mr Calderon was not prepared to wait. In an interview on the biggest national television network yesterday the 43-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer insisted his triumph was irreversible, adding: "Let's realise that the electoral campaign was hard-fought and competitive, but it is now over."

In a similar interview, leftwinger Mr Lopez Obrador reiterated his conviction that he had won, although in somewhat less strident tones than he had used a few hours earlier before thousands of supporters in the capital's Zocalo plaza. "We are going to fully review the process," he said.

"We are going to defend the will of the people." The prospect of days, perhaps weeks, of uncertainty raised concerns that the existing tension could escalate, with the two camps mobilising supporters to defend the victories they claim. This could carry a threat of violence as well as an implicit rejection of the authority of the electoral institutions, undermining the country's young democracy.

Yesterday's poll was the first presidential election since Vicente Fox's historic victory for Pan six years ago that ended seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary party, the PRI. The PRI's candidate, Roberto Madrazo, trailed in third place, 14 points behind the leaders. "This is the worst possible scenario," said Denise Dresser, a leading Mexican political scientist. "This election will now be contested up to the very last vote, which will take a long time and will be hardly credible to the population."

The dramatic finale to the election comes after a long and hard campaign set to determine whether Mexico becomes the latest Latin American country to move to the left, following in the footsteps of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile. Mr Lopez Obrador, 52, ran with the slogan "for the good of all, first the poor".

While he sounded tough on the stump his proposals were less than radical. They boil down to subsidies for the downtrodden combined with public investment in infrastructure aimed at kick-starting a flagging economy - all paid for by slimming down bureaucracy.

Mr Calderon, 43, had started his campaign pushing a vague pro-private investment programme alongside targeted social programmes. He trailed badly in the polls until he launched a barrage of personalised negative political advertising against his rival.

The ads compared Mr Lopez Obrador to Venezuela's controversial president Hugo Chavez, as well as claiming that he would plunge the country into economic crisis.

Nevertheless, electoral officials said voting was relatively peaceful with few complaints of irregularities.

The Guardian

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Nawaz Sharif's British visa to expire this month

Islamabad: The British visa of exiled former Pakistan Premier Nawaz Sharif would expire this month and he is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia soon to seek its renewal.

Sharif, who was deposed by then army ruler Pervez Musharraf and exiled to Jeddah in 2000, moved to London after completion of his five year's exile. He has subsequently launched a campaign to oust Musharraf along with another former Premier Benazir Bhutto.

Rules stipulate that Sharif has to move out of London to apply for renewal of visa, media reports here said. Official of the British High Commission in Islamabad said they have so far not received any application from Sharif for renewal of his visa, daily times reported.

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Girija Koirala getting well

Kathmandu: Doctors from India have been attending to Nepal's ailing Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala whose condition is stated to be stable. Doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, including chest specialist Dr J. N. Pandey, were assisting Nepalese doctors treating the octogenarian leader who was rushed to Ganga Lal Hospital here on Monday night after complaining of chest pain.

Doctors said the veteran leader would need to spend two more weeks in hospital to recover from pneumonia.

"Prime Minister Koirala's health condition has improved a little bit after he was admitted to the hospital.

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Court delays on Sobhraj's appeal

Kathmandu: Nepal's Supreme Court today delayed the hearing on an appeal by serial killer Charles Sobhraj by at least three weeks due to some technical reason.

The court postponed the hearing on Sobhraj's case because justices at Wednesday bench were the same as those present at a previous hearing of the same case, said Supreme Court registrar Ramkrishna Timilsina.

Justices Ram Prasad Shrestha and R. P. Koirala were assigned to the bench but they could not take up the case as they had earlier served in the case involving Sobhraj, he said. "The Sobhraj hearing due to be held on Wednesday has been differed and it will take at least 22 days for another hearing as there are over a dozen cases pending," the official said.

(Zeenews.com)