Noticias

Syrian president Bashar Assad is quietly preparing the ground to hold elections early this summer, even as the Syrian conflict rampages into its fourth year with large parts of the country either in ruins or under opposition control.

Amid the destruction, which has left more than 140,000 dead, presidential elections may seem impossible. But Syrian officials insist they will be held on time.

Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah stood in front of a crowd in Kandahar on Sunday addressing the people that the militant attack on the Independent Elections Commission (IEC) will not stop people from voting.

“The IEC building was attacked yesterday; I am telling Afghanistan’s enemies that Afghans will not change their decision in taking part in elections,” Abdullah said. “Threats and attacks will not change the people’s decision.”

Efforts to decrease the number abstainers in the 2014 general election were important to quash predictions that there would be riots, Election Organizers Ethics Council (DKPP) chairman Jimly Asshiddiqie said on Sunday.

"It is even being said that the Indonesian Military [TNI] will launch a constitutional coup,” he said during a speech at Al-Azhar Grand Mosque in South Jakarta as quoted by tempo.co.

He said that there was no such thing as a constitutional coup and asked the public to prevent such a thing from becoming a reality.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) on Sunday kicked off the 2014 legislative election for Indonesian citizens in five countries

Voting will be carried out at six representative offices, namely in Beijing, Shanghai, Brasilia, Copenhagen, Santiago and Hong Kong.

KPU commissioner Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah said that voting had been scheduled around the local holiday and in consideration of weather conditions to boost voter turnout. In Hong Kong, for instance, voting was held on Sunday, as a storm was predicted to hit the country in early April.

Jakarta. Nisa Ariyani staunchly supported Indonesia’s Muslim parties her whole life, throughout decades of authoritarian rule and at the three legislative elections after the country became democratic.

But when tens of millions vote in parliamentary polls in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country on April 9, the 42-year-old teacher is set to join a growing number who will not cast their ballot for an Islamic party.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been shaken with a fresh resignation on the day of critical local polls.

AKP’s Kayseri MP Ahmet Öksüzkaya announced via Twitter that he was quitting his party only an hour after the voting ended. 

“I am sadly seeing that my personal views on democracy, law and consensus do not correspond with my party’s policies,” Öksüzkaya said in a statement.

“I hope that all my friends with whom I worked with will accept my decision. I will continue to serve my country and my city as an independent,” he said. 

Incumbent Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek has declared victory in his bid to win the capital's mayoral seat for a fifth consecutive time, dismissing suggestions from his main rival, Mansur Yavaş of the Republican People's Party (CHP), that the main opposition had won the city.

“It is an exact manipulation. Nobody should believe in the Cihan news agency,” Gökçek said, in an apparent reference to the discrepancies in reported counted votes by the state-run Anadolu Agency and the private Cihan news agency.

Our correspondent in Baidoa Ahmed Abdi Hassan informs us that today the president of the Federal Republic of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud reached the city today.

The president was accompanied by some ministers of the Federal Government, one of them Minister of Environment & Livestock Salim Aliyow Ibrow and others.

Dozens of soldiers were spread across Baidoa ahead of the president’s arrival with public transportation halted.