What will be the test of legitimacy for Afghanistan’s elections?
No-one is using the age-old electoral mantra “free and fair”.
It is hard to find anyone who expects Afghanistan’s third major poll since 2001 to be fully free or fully fair.
These are the first elections since 2001 run primarily by Afghans – albeit with international support.
There’s been an unprecedented level of political debate and lively campaigning in this first truly contested poll.
But one embittered election expert described it as a “squandered opportunity”.

Silvio Berlusconi is an Italian politician, entrepreneur. He is the second longest-serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic.

Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj is a Mongolian politician and the President of Mongolia.

Tsakhia Elbegdorj won the presidency in with a narrow election win over incumbent Nambaryn Enkhbayar in May 24 2009. He was set to take office later in the month.
Standing for the opposition Democratic Party, Elbegdorj won just over 51% of the vote, to 47% for Enkhbayar, whose ruling Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) said it accepted the result as fair.

ROME — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Thursday that he had used a state plane to ferry personal guests to his private villa — but that there was nothing improper as he and other government officials were flying on the jet.
Rome prosecutors earlier in the week launched an investigation into whether the premier allegedly abused his powers by arranging for partygoers — including a dancer and singer — to use government aircraft and for official security escorts to travel to his villa on the island of Sardinia.

Moldova — Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin failed on Wednesday to secure the parliament’s election of a compliant ally as his successor who would have allowed him to continue running the country behind the scenes.
Voronin’s plan to win parliamentary support for fellow Communist Zinaida Greceanii came unstuck when opposition parties torpedoed the ballot with a boycott that denied her, by just one vote, the required tally of votes for election.
The outcome triggers new parliamentary elections, though Voronin took no immediate steps to dissolve the chamber.

A beautiful woman glances seductively over her shoulder from a billboard on a busy Beirut thoroughfare. But it isn’t perfume or shampoo she’s selling: It’s politics.
The ad, which urges women to “be beautiful and vote,” was one of the more controversial campaign advertisements rolled out by parliamentary candidate Gen. Michel Aoun, whose party is allied with the Islamist group Hezbollah and is expected to make gains in national elections Sunday.

Beleaguered by Labor Party plotters hoping to unseat him and by the prospect of disastrous local election results for Labor that are expected on Friday morning, Prime Minister Gordon Brown chose on Thursday to send out aides avowing to reporters, anonymously, that there was “no chance” he would resign.
The prime minister’s move, reported by the BBC and the Web sites of several British newspapers, surprised nobody, given Mr. Brown’s trademark as a political pit bull. He has a reputation for fighting his corner with a tenacity born of the decade …

Dutch voters gave a populist, anti-immigrant party its first four seats ever in the European Parliament, sending a warning to incumbent European governments, according to exit polls.
The triumph for the Party for Freedom and its leader Geert Wilders kicked off four days of European Union-wide elections involving more than 12,000 candidates competing for more than 730 seats.
Mr. Wilders’s party was expected to win four of the 25 seats allocated to the Netherlands, according to exit polls by Dutch news agency ANP.

Voters in Mongolia are electing a new president, a year after vote-rigging claims in parliamentary polls triggered deadly riots in the country.
Current President Nambaryn Enkhbayar of the former Communist party is being challenged by Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the main opposition Democratic Party.
Polls opened at 2300 GMT on Saturday are due to close at 1400 GMT on Sunday.