Tegucigalpa, Honduras – The month-old mediation effort by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to resolve Honduras’s political crisis is foundering under the near-universal opposition of Honduras’s top leaders to permitting deposed President Manuel Zelaya to return to power.
Political, business, church, and media leaders say they can’t trust Mr. Zelaya to keep the commitments that would limit his authority under the Arias plan because, they say, Zelaya repeatedly violated the Constitution in the days that led up to his June 28 ouster over a proposed public vote that they think was …

South Korean ex-President Roh Moo-hyun, who apparently jumped to his death on Saturday, rose to office as champion of a generation that hit the streets to fight for democracy, but left it largely written off as a failed leader.
A self-taught lawyer whose formal education ended at high school, Roh’s most celebrated moment came when he went to Pyongyang in 2007 for a summit with Kim Jong-il in what was only the second meeting of leaders of the divided peninsula.
The left-leaning Roh, 62, won the 2002 presidential election by riding a …

Roh Moo-hyun was the 16th President of South Korea.

Voters in Indonesia are preparing to elect a new national parliament, in a vote that will shape how the world’s third largest democracy responds to the challenges of the global economic crisis.
About 171 million Indonesians are eligible to vote, with more than 13,000 candidates competing for 132 seats in the upper house of parliament and 560 seats in the lower house.
The election is only the third democratic vote since the fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998 and will help decide the field of contenders for presidential elections scheduled …

Presidential elections will be held in Indonesia on 8 July 2009 (with a run-off on 8 September, if needed), to elect President and Vice President for 2009–2014 period. This election likely to become the main contest and rematch between incumbent Democratic President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle former President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Polls from early January 2009 saw Yudhoyono lead with 43% to Megawati’s 19%, with all other candidates at 5% or less.

The US has reiterated it prefers an August date for presidential elections in Afghanistan, despite President Hamid Karzai’s call for polls on 21 April.
The US state department said elections in August would best ensure a free vote in a secure environment.
On Saturday, Mr Karzai called for polls before his term ends in May. The Afghan Independent Elections Commission says elections should be held by 20 August.
The president has no power to unilaterally choose election dates.

First president of the independent Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk has called on incumbent president Viktor Yuschenko to resign and call early presidential elections.
Kravchuk said this in his address to Yuschenko broadcast on a number of central television channels on Tuesday.
“I have watched you currently paying attention not to Ukraine’s problems, but to the ways to cling to power,” Kravchuk said in his statement.

Afghanistan is postponing its presidential elections until August 20 due to security and logistical concerns, the country’s election commission said Thursday.
The balloting was originally scheduled for late May, but the independent election commission laid out several reasons for the delay.
Security is a factor, the commission said. It also cited a lack of trained staff, incomplete voter registration and the weather.

Indirect presidential elections were held in Malta on 12 January 2009. Former Labour Party deputy leader George Abela was elected to become the next President of Malta on 4 April 2009, when the incumbent Eddie Fenech Adami steps down; this marks the first time that a member of the opposition was elected president, as the Nationalist Party controlled the legislature.

John Atta Mills, who finished runner-up in Ghana’s two previous presidential elections, won the top post in a run-off election held on Dec. 28, results collated by Joy FM radio staion showed.
Mills, head of the National Democratic Congress, garnered 4.3 million votes, or 50.77 percent of the vote, from 222 of 230 constituencies, the Accra-based radio station said on its Internet site. Nana Akufo-Addo, candidate for the New Patriotic Party, polled 4.17 million votes, or 49.2 percent, Joy’s data showed. The radio station said it collated results from polling stations.