News

The parliamentary session to elect a new president was postponed on Wednesday for the 32nd time following a lack of quorum at the session.

Speaker Nabih Berri scheduled December 16 as the next date for the polls.

Following the meeting, Lebanese Forces MP Georges Adwan declared: “We do not judge candidates, but their presidential platforms.”

ISLAMABAD: The top court has declared the process of recounting ballot papers should not be initiated without solid evidence of wrongdoing.

“The secrecy of the ballot should not be violated on the basis of frivolous, vague and totally unfounded allegations,” stated a three-judge apex court bench, headed by Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, on Tuesday.

The judges issued the written judgment while declaring Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) leader Jam Madad Ali as the winner on PS-81 in Sanghar.

ISLAMABAD: Local government (LG) elections concluded peacefully in the federal capital on Monday amid low voter turnout and high security.

Voting began at 7.00am and continued without any break till 5.30pm, Radio Pakistan earlier reported.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) received at least 30 complaints of minor nature.

Residents of Islamabad went to the polls today to elect local representatives for the first time under the newly-minted Islamabad Local Government Act, 2015.

Unofficial results collated from 44 of the 50 union councils show that the PML-N has won 20 UCs, followed by the PTI with 18 and independent candidates with six.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) comfortably won a parliamentary vote of confidence on Nov. 30, a month after its landslide victory in the Nov. 1 snap elections.

509 deputies cast votes on Nov. 30, and the AKP received 315 votes of confidence while 194 deputies cast votes of no confidence. 

ISLAMABAD: Although rural parts of the capital voted in one local government election in 1979, residents of the urban areas have never before been given the chance to elect representatives at the grassroots-level.

The psyche of voters differs between the rural and urban parts of the capital. In the rural areas, there is definitely a greater involvement with the electoral process and many residents believe that the representatives they elect on Monday will be able to work towards their betterment in a more effective way.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took action on Sunday to encourage changes in the electoral system and to enable absentee balloting in Israel for the first time.

Netanyahu has supported absentee balloting for 20 years. He appointed Tourism Minister Yariv Levin to head two coalition task forces, one of which would lay the groundwork for absentee balloting and the other for other electoral reforms.

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Free&Fair ElectionFoundation ofAfghanistan(FEFA)on Friday voiced its grave concern over the inordinate delay in the selectioncommittee’s work.

The delay in the nomination of election commission members by the selection committee could push back further parliamentary and district council polls, a senior FEFA official warned.

Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Can Dündar and the daily’s Ankara bureau chief, Erdem Gül, were arrested due to stories published about Turkish intelligence trucks bound for Syria in early 2014, on Nov. 26 in Istanbul.

“We are accused of ‘spying.’ The president said [our action is] ‘treason.’ We are not traitors, spy, or heroes; we are journalists. What we have done here was an act of journalism,” Dündar said before testifying to prosecutors on Nov. 26, in a case that has been denounced by many as an attack against free press.