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.

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua has urged parliament to quickly pass electoral reform legislation to avoid a repeat of last weekend’s botched election in southwestern Ekiti state, a spokesman said on Sunday.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last week delayed the gubernatorial election in Ekiti after voting in the town of Oye, home to 18,000 voters, was disrupted by security threats from “politicians and their gangs.” INEC has rescheduled voting in Oye for Tuesday.

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 …

Malaysia’s new Prime Minister, Najib Razak, is facing his first major test, as voters cast their ballots in three local by-elections.
One parliament seat and two state seats are being contested, but the results are also being seen as an indication of support in Mr Najib’s leadership.
Mr Najib took office on Friday, to replace former leader Abdullah Badawi.

One of Australia’s key mining states, Queensland, will go to the polls on March 21 in what could be a major test of how Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is seen to be handling the global financial crisis.
Queensland is Rudd’s home state and heavily reliant on the mining industry, putting it on the front line of the crisis as export demand tumbles and unemployment climbs. An election was not due to be called there until September.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who belongs to Rudd’s ruling Labor party, said in a video statement …

The president of Latvia plans to name on Thursday a new prime minister who will have to deal with a deepening economic crisis and try to reassure investors the country will stick to painful budget cuts.
The pressure on the small Baltic nation to form a new government quickly increased after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday gave a junk debt rating to Latvia, only the second EU nation to go below investment grade after Romania.
“We are planning Thursday (to name a new prime minister),” said the spokeswoman for President …

Iraqi MPs struggling to break a political deadlock over the election of the next speaker of parliament postponed a vote on Monday until after regional polls scheduled for the end of the month, an official said.
“The decision to postpone was made after the parliament’s presiding board and the heads of political entities in the parliament agreed on the issue today,” the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The voting process for a new speaker will now take place on February 4 and 5.

The party of El Salvador’s former left-wing guerrillas is poised for victory in the parliamentary election.
With almost 70% of votes counted, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) had a nine-point lead over the governing conservative party Arena.
But Arena took the lead in municipal polls and neither party has gained enough seats for an outright majority.
The FMLN’s victory would be their first since the end of the country’s bloody civil war in 1992.

An alliance under Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina won a massive parliamentary majority in the country’s first polls in seven years, unofficial results showed, but a rival party complained of irregularities.
Analysts said it was unclear if the losers would accept the results or take their supporters onto the streets to protest. Confrontations, strikes and street violence have often hampered the effectiveness of Bangladeshi governments in the past.
Unofficial results from election centres around the country showed Hasina’s “Grand Alliance” led by her Awami League had so far won 206 …

Her plucked-and-arched eyebrows flanking brown shades, pink chiffon chador over head with a wisp of grey showing, Begum Khaleda Zia has just cast her vote in the centre at Adamjee Cantonment School and College here.
Workers of her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), she alleges, have been harassed overnight in Rangpur and Satkhira, but she is hoping the elections will be peaceful.
The Awami League’s 14-party combine is widely tipped to take an edge over the BNP-led four-party alliance. Zia may be positioning herself for an upset after claiming she was on …