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.

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.

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.

Moldova’s parliament has failed to elect a new president – increasing the possibility the country will have to hold a new general election.
The last election sparked violent scenes as protesters claimed the Communist Party victory was fraudulent.
The Communists needed 61 votes in the 101-seat parliament to elect their candidate Zinaida Greceanii – but only mustered 60 amid an opposition boycott.

Yukio Hatoyama has been chosen as leader of Japan’s opposition Democratic Party, in the run-up to parliamentary elections later this year.
The 62-year-old grandson of a former prime minister replaces Ichiro Ozawa, who stepped down amid a fund-raising scandal on May 11.
The Democrats have promised to cut wasteful spending and bureaucracy.
General elections are due by October, and Saturday’s opinion polls suggest the Democrats may be ahead of the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for about 50 years.

The biggest phase of India’s parliamentary elections is under way amid fresh attacks blamed on Maoist fighters and a heat wave sweeping across much of the country.
As the second of five rounds of polling went ahead on Thursday, suspected fighters launched a bomb attack on a vehicle carrying election officials in the eastern Jharkhand state, authorities said.
A magistrate and a police officer were hurt in the blast, according to SP Pradhan, a Jharkhand government spokesman.
Security forces subsequently launched an aerial raid on a suspected Maoist base in a wooded …

Indonesians went to the polls on Thursday across the vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands in parliamentary elections seen as key to setting the pace of further reforms in Southeast Asia’s top economy.
The elections, a massive exercise in democracy with more than 170 million eligible voters, were marred by overnight violence in which at least six people died in the eastern province of Papua.
Economic issues are topping the agenda in the polls, which have faced logistical woes ranging from problems verifying electoral lists to educating the public about the …

North Koreans cast ballots Sunday in parliamentary elections watched by outside observers for hints of who might eventually succeed leader Kim Jong-Il.
Kim himself is running. And his near-certain win would affirm that the 67-year-old leader is firmly in control of the nuclear-armed nation despite a reported stroke in August.
But with Kim’s recent health scare, analysts were looking for signs of whether he was ready to groom one of his sons as an heir to the world’s only communist dynasty.

More Israelis have cast their ballot in the first few hours of voting than during the 2006 general election, electoral commission officials say.
By 8pm local time [18:00 GMT] on Tuesday, 59.7 per cent of 5.3 million eligible voters had voted, compared to 57.2 per cent per cent in the last parliamentary election.