Taiwan Elects a Leader Who Seeks Closer China Ties

By KEITH BRADSHER

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan elected on Saturday its first president who had campaigned for closer economic relations with Beijing, paving the way for a considerable lessening of tensions in one of Asia’s oldest flashpoints.

Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Taipei mayor from the Nationalist Party, won by a convincing margin. He prevailed despite a last-minute effort by his opponent, Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party, to warn that the Chinese crackdown in Tibet represented a warning of what could also happen to Taiwan if it did not stand up to Beijing.

With all votes counted, Mr. Ma prevailed 58.45 percent to 41.55 percent and Mr. Hsieh quickly conceded defeat. Clear skies and warm weather until early evening helped produce a heavy voter turnout of 75.7 percent,which tends to help Nationalist candidates, like Mr. Ma.

Both parties’ polls showed an increasingly close race in the final days of campaigning, in contrast with the last polls by media organizations nearly two weeks ago, which showed Mr. Ma ahead by 20 percent. But in election day interviews, voters echoed Mr. Ma’s stance that closer relations with the mainland and its fast-growing economy represent the island’s best hope of returning to the rapid economic growth it enjoyed until the late 1990s.

Jason Lin, a 41-year-old interior designer, said as he left a polling place in Taipei that he had always voted for the Democratic Progressive Party until this year and remains a member of the party. But he crossed party lines to vote for Mr. Ma on Saturday because he was convinced that Taiwan’s economic survival depended on closer ties.

“If we don’t get into China’s market, we are locked into our own country,” he said.

Beijing officials have been wooing the Nationalists for years, even hosting visits to the mainland over the past three years by those party leaders who are especially eager for eventual political reunification with the mainland, like Lien Chan, the party’s unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004.

Mr. Ma has taken a more cautious approach to the mainland, attending annual vigils for those killed during the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing in 1989 and denouncing the mainland’s repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement over the past decade. During the campaign, he ruled out any discussion of political reunification while calling for the introduction of direct, regularly scheduled flights to Shanghai and Beijing and an end to Taiwan’s extensive limits on its companies’ ability to invest on the mainland.

Chinese government officials had no immediate response to the election results on Saturday evening, but had made little secret of their hope that he would win.

“China has a love-hate relationship with Ma — when I visited China last November, they criticized Ma a lot, and then asked me to vote for Ma,” said Yen Chen-Shen, a political scientist at National Chengchi University.

American officials have been deeply frustrated with President Chen Shui-bian, also of the Democratic Progressive Party, and have sought to lessen tensions between Taiwan and the mainland while preserving the political status quo. But the Bush administration has also been irritated by the reluctance of Nationalists in the legislature to vote for purchases of American weapon systems, including systems that President Bush offered for sale in 2001 but which Taiwan still has not purchased.

Many in Taiwan have preferred to spend money on social programs while relying on the United States military to deter aggression by the mainland, prompting bitter jokes among American military personnel that if mainland military forces ever land on Taiwan, the Taiwanese will fight them to the last American.

Cheng Ta-chen, a Nationalist aide to Mr. Ma on security policy, said that the Nationalists had not been given enough information by President Chen to understand and approve military purchases.

Following his inauguration, scheduled for May 20, Mr. Ma will have almost complete political power to pursue his agenda. His party and two tiny affiliated parties together took three-quarters of the legislature in January elections. Nationalists also serve as the magistrates, a position akin to mayor, in 15 of Taiwan’s 25 largest cities.

The extent of Nationalist control made some voters nervous on Saturday.

Two controversial referendums, calling for Taiwan to apply for membership in the United Nations, also fell well short of passage.

Taiwan's referendum law requires a majority of eligible voters to vote on a referendum for it to be valid. Nationalists called for voters not to cast ballots for either initiative and slightly less than 36 percent of eligible voters did so.

With China strongly opposed to United Nations membership for Taiwan, which it regards as a breakaway province, the island's recent efforts to win membership have failed completely. The United States and China had both denounced as provocative the referendum sponsored by the Democratic Progressive Party, which specifically called for the island to apply as Taiwan and not using its legal name, the Republic of China.

The legal name reflects the principle that Taiwan and the mainland still form one China.

Taiwan's economy grew 5.7 percent last year, but middle-class and working-class incomes have stagnated as an affluent elite has grown prosperous, often from investments on the mainland.

Much of the island’s manufacturing industry has shifted to the mainland and hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese, have moved to the mainland to manage these operations. The bulk of these are men aged 25 to 45, leaving a dearth of skills and entrepreneurial energy in Taiwan itself.

Pakistan’s Leaders Try New Approach to Militants

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Faced with a sharp escalation of suicide bombing in urban areas, the leaders of Pakistan’s new coalition government say they will negotiate with the militants believed to be orchestrating the attacks, and would use the military only as a last resort.

That talk has alarmed American officials, who fear it will mean a softening stance against the militants just as President Pervez Musharraf, an ally in the war on terror, has given the Bush administration a freer hand to strike at them using unmanned Predator drones.

Many Pakistanis, however, are convinced the surge in suicide bombings — 17 in the first 10 weeks of 2008 — is in direct retaliation for three such Predator strikes since the beginning of the year. The spike in attacks, combined with Mr. Musharraf’s crushing defeat in February elections, has brought a new mood in Pakistan: that there should be a change from his American-backed policies.

It is this atmosphere that the leaders of Pakistan’s new government coalition — Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People’s Party, and Nawaz, Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N — want to capitalize on. Speaking in separate interviews, the two men sought to repackage the conflict in a more palatable way for Pakistanis, and to strike a more independent stance from Washington.

Though short on details, they said they were determined to set a different course from President Musharraf, who received generous military financial help of more than $10 billion from Washington for his support.

“We are dealing with our own people,” said Mr. Sharif, who was twice Prime Minister of Pakistan in the 1990s. “We will deal with them very sensibly. And when you have a problem in your own family, you don’t kill your own family.

“You sit and talk,” he added. “After all, Britain also got the solution of the problem of Ireland. So what’s the harm in conducting negotiations.”

For his part, Mr. Zardari said: “Obviously what they have been doing for the last eight years has not been working. Even a fool knows that.”

The war against the insurgents had to be redefined, he said, as “Pakistan’s war” for a public that has come to resent the conflict as being pushed on the country as part of an American agenda. It should be dealt with by talks and the use of a beefed up police force rather than the army, he said.

Washington has opposed past negotiations on the grounds that short term peace deals between the militants and the Pakistani military were a sign of weakness that resulted in the militants winning time to fortify themselves.

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on a visit here last month that talks with the militants, were not helpful in the “short term.”

In general terms, according to a retired senior Pakistani general who remains close to the current military leadership, new negotiations would likely involve a ban on non-Pakistani militants — such as Afghans, Uzbeks, Chechens — coming from southern Afghanistan into Pakistan in return for reduced operations by the Pakistani army in the tribal areas.

But precisely how those talks would be different from the negotiations that led to failed peace deals under Mr. Musharraf was not entirely clear, except that negotiators would represent the newly elected government rather than the military government of the last eight years.

Neither Mr. Zardari nor Mr. Sharif was specific about whom among the militant groups in Pakistan’s tribal areas they favored talking to. Nor was it clear what kind of formula or quid pro quo the two political leaders had in mind for talks.

Mr. Sharif, whose Islamic religious background is conservative, refused to say whether he would negotiate with Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader whom the government blames for many if not most of the recent suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan.

American and Pakistani terrorist experts have said they believe that Mr. Mehsud was behind the assassination of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in December, and that he works in tandem with Al Qaeda. “Nobody gave me any presentation on this subject,” Mr. Sharif said.

Asked who the negotiations would be held with, Mr. Sharif replied: “With all the concerned elements. I don’t think guns and bullets have so far produced any positive results.”

Any result that smacks of Pakistan ceding further control over the tribal areas is not one likely to be welcomed in Washington. The Bush administration views the tribal areas as a sanctuary for Taliban forces who cross the border into Afghanistan to fight American and NATO forces, as well as a base for Al Qaeda to plot new terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe.

Pakistanis, however, have come to see the tribal areas as something entirely different: a once peaceful region where a group of militants have turned their wrath on the rest of the country as punishment for the American alliance.

Many civilians are among the 274 people killed since the beginning of the year, but the dead also include young soldiers and policemen, according to a tally by the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn. A bomb explosion at an Italian restaurant favored by foreigners in Islamabad last Saturday injured four F.B.I. agents, and underscored for Pakistanis yet again the American involvement here.

Washington may have little choice but to adjust to the new policies, a retired army brigadier, Mehmood Shah, who was in charge of security in the tribal areas, said.

Of the new Pakistani government, Mr. Shah said: “They will not like to be seen as dictated to by the United States, they would like it to be seen as ‘our war.’ ”

Mr. Shah, who met with Admiral Mullen when he was in Islamabad, said there was a popular sense in Pakistan — prevalent on television talk shows as well as the halls of parliament — that it was time to “keep a distance from the United States.”

As Pakistan’s new leaders fashion their strategy, however, they will unavoidably be dealing with programs devised by Washington to help Pakistan regain control of the lawless tribal areas. In some places, the approaches may yet dovetail.

For instance, one element of the stepped-up American aid effort is a $400 million plan to train the Frontier Corps, an under funded paramilitary force that is used to patrol the border with Afghanistan.

Mr. Sharif said he had heard about the plan, expected to begin in October, but had no details.

Mr. Zardari favored employing such a force over relying on the army, which he said was the “wrong instrument” to use against the militants. “We need to use the police force,” he said. “They had few guns, made in 1952. You have to upgrade them. You have got to give them modern technology and they will stand better than anybody else.”

Mr. Sharif, who is regarded as a nationalist — he gave the go ahead for the explosion of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb in 1998 — said he was not in favor of foreign aid. “I think frankly we should rely less on aid,” he said. “It makes us, you see, lazy. We should generate our own resources.”

Both men stressed that the new parliament, which held its first session this week, would be consulted on the strategy toward the insurgency, a sharp distinction from the go-it-alone behavior of Mr. Musharraf, who until last year served as both head of the army and president.

The two leaders have made much of the fact that they received a broad mandate in the elections last month. To that end, they said, they would revive the role of parliament.

As an example of the docile legislature, a recent report of the parliament’s committee on defense for the last four years consisted of 67 pages. The panel was apparently so short of funds, the report was published with funding from the United States Agency for International Development whose logo appears on the last page.

The only mention on the war on terror was a resolution by the committee in 2007 criticizing the United States for threatening to link the amount of aid to Pakistan to the performance of the army.

Another important distinction from the past is that the new government would not use “the same tainted network of agencies and the army who have created this” situation, said one of Mr. Sharif’s senior lieutenants, Nisar Ali Khan, who has relatives in prominent positions in the army.

“The new start won’t be with them,” he said. “It has to be a multifaceted operation with the tribal chiefs who are operating in the area.”

Both parties have long accused Pakistan’s intelligence agencies of backing militant groups even as the government has been forced to negotiate with them. Many of the groups were used to pressure India and Afghanistan, but have more recently turned their fury back on Pakistan as they have become more radicalized.

Those intelligence agencies will almost certainly have new leadership chosen by the new prime minister. Whether fresh faces at the top will mean change in the ingrained behavior of the agencies is an open question, however.

The head of the Inter Services Intelligence agency, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, a relative of Mr. Musharraf, is likely to be replaced in the coming months, Pakistani officials said. The head of the Intelligence Bureau, another powerful agency, Ijaz Shah, a confidant of Mr. Musharraf, resigned this week. His replacement will be named by the new prime minister, who is expected to be named on Monday by Mr. Zardari.

Mr. Zardari is not immediately eligible to become prime minister himself because he did not run for Parliament. But it is likely he will do so in the coming months and then assume the mantle.

China Tensions Could Sway Vote in Taiwan

By KEITH BRADSHER

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Violent unrest in Tibet has created shock waves in another volatile region on China’s periphery, shaking up the presidential election in Taiwan and sapping support for the candidate Beijing had hoped would win handily.

The suppression of Tibet protests by Chinese security forces, as well as missteps by the Nationalist Party, which Beijing favors, have nearly erased what had seemed like an insuperable lead for Ma Ying-jeou, the Harvard-educated lawyer who has been the front-runner in the race.

Concern that China’s crackdown could herald a tougher line on outlying regions that Beijing claims as sovereign territory, including Taiwan, has become the most contested campaign issue ahead of Saturday’s election.

On Thursday, China acknowledged for the first time that security forces had opened fire on Tibetan protesters in Sichuan Province, while also saying that protests had spread to several areas of China where ethnic Tibetans live.

Even if Mr. Ma wins, the election may now give him a weaker mandate for his goal of pursuing closer economic ties and reduced diplomatic tensions with China.

A loss by Mr. Ma, which campaign analysts say is unlikely but now possible, would be a major setback for China’s leaders. They have cultivated the Nationalists in recent years to undermine Taiwan’s current pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, and reduce the chances that his Democratic Progressive Party will hold the presidency after Mr. Chen’s mandatory retirement.

The stirring up of the election on Taiwan, which Beijing has long considered its top national security priority, is a potentially heavy price for the Tibetan unrest and the ensuing police action. Beijing also faces a stronger international outcry over its human rights record and scattered calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games, which China hopes will showcase the country’s rapid development.

Both the Nationalists and the Democratic Progressive Party promise to reduce tensions between Taiwan and China. But China has been wary of the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh, who inherits a volatile coalition that includes many native Taiwanese who favor outright independence from China.

Mr. Hsieh and his party, with help from Mr. Chen’s ministers, have moved swiftly to turn Tibet into a central campaign issue. They contend that Tibet’s fate is a warning of Taiwan’s future if it does not stand up to Beijing.

“What has happened in Tibet in the past three decades, and what is going on now, is a warning to us,” said Shieh Jhy-wey, the minister of information and a Democratic Progressive Party member who takes a hard line toward Beijing. “We don’t want to have the same fate as Tibet.”

Mr. Hsieh abruptly turned a campaign rally in Taipei on Wednesday night into a candlelight vigil for Tibetans who have been killed, injured or detained during the Chinese crackdown. Party activists unfurled a huge Tibetan flag, and Tibetan students sang a Tibetan anthem.

A huge television screen at the rally showed a documentary on Tibetan history provided by the Taiwan office of the Dalai Lama, as well as a short video of Chinese soldiers mistreating Tibetans. Mr. Hsieh’s running mate, Su Tseng-chang, has scheduled a “Support Tibet” rally for Friday morning while Mr. Hsieh has scheduled a “Protect Taiwan Democracy” election-eve rally in Taipei for Friday.

With politicians from both parties concluding that the Tibet issue is hurting the Nationalists, Mr. Ma has focused on damage control. To the surprise of many even in his own party, he warned this week that Taiwan might boycott the Olympics if the Chinese crackdown in Tibet turned more draconian and if conditions there deteriorated further.

Known for his gentlemanly style, his reluctance to engage in personal attacks on political adversaries and his long-held desire for more cordial relations with the mainland, Mr. Ma has also rushed to distance himself from Beijing by using uncharacteristically harsh language.

When Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said Tuesday that Taiwan’s future should be decided by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and not just by Taiwan residents, Mr. Ma condemned what he described as a “ruthless, irrational, arrogant, foolish and self-righteous comment.” Mr. Hsieh has rejected any boycott of the Olympics.

Opinion polls showed Mr. Ma with a lead of up to 20 percentage points last week; Taiwan’s election laws do not allow the release of polls during the final 10 days before voting.

But surveys by both parties show that more than half of that lead has evaporated. Mr. Ma is now ahead by a more slender margin because of Tibet and because of an embarrassing incident in which four Nationalist lawmakers were caught roaming through the Democratic Progressive Party’s headquarters, politicians and political analysts said.

The closer race has reinvigorated the Democratic Progressive Party, which had been deeply gloomy after badly losing a January vote for the legislature. “We have narrowed the gap significantly since January and I believe the final outcome will be very close,” said Hsiao Bi-khim, the international affairs director of Mr. Hsieh’s campaign.

Su Chi, a Nationalist lawmaker and deputy campaign manager for Mr. Ma, said that Mr. Ma’s lead had narrowed in the last few days, but added that this was to be expected.

Many Democratic Progressive Party supporters did not vote in the legislative elections because they were disillusioned with corruption cases involving the current government, but they are now becoming more active as Mr. Hsieh has campaigned aggressively, Mr. Su said, adding that he still thought Mr. Ma would win.

Government ministers have helped Mr. Hsieh by repeatedly drawing attention to the difficulties in Tibet.

At a news conference on Thursday, Chen Ming-tong, the chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, the ministry responsible for relations with the mainland, called for the international community to put more pressure on China to begin a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet’s government in exile.

Mr. Hsieh received an influential endorsement on Thursday. Lee Teng-hui, a former Nationalist president of Taiwan who now favors much greater political independence from the mainland, said he would vote for Mr. Hsieh.

The Nationalists and two affiliated minor parties captured three-quarters of the seats in the legislature in January’s elections, in a crushing defeat for the Democratic Progressive Party. The Nationalists’ capitalized on voters’ concerns about stagnant household incomes and paralysis in contacts with the fast-growing mainland economy — two potent issues that could still produce a victory for Mr. Ma on Saturday.

But the incident at Mr. Hsieh’s offices last week helped his party warn voters against giving too much power to the opposition. Four Nationalist lawmakers roamed through Mr. Hsieh’s offices in an attempt to document whether the building lease complied with election laws.

Mr. Hsieh’s aides trapped the four in an elevator, accused them of trespassing and called the police. A crowd of Democratic Progressive Party supporters formed and smashed the windshield of one of the police cars that rescued the four; Mr. Ma has apologized repeatedly since then.

Mr. Hsieh has staked out a more moderate position toward Beijing than Mr. Chen has. Mr. Ma has taken positions similar to Mr. Hsieh’s on economic issues, and he said that he would not seek political reunification with the mainland, still the goal of many Nationalists.

Many of the two men’s proposals, like direct flights to China, would require talks with Beijing, and are more likely to happen if Mr. Ma is elected because mainland officials have been reluctant to have formal contacts with the Democratic Progressive Party.

Report: Kenya's Post-Election Violence 'Meticulously' Organized

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 17, 2008; 6:40 AM

Nairobi, March 17-- Post-election attacks on villagers in Kenya's western Rift Valley were often "meticulously" organized by local opposition leaders who called for "war" against people from President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group, according to a report by the group Human Rights Watch released Monday.

The report also detailed widespread killings by Kenyan police of opposition supporters, especially in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu in western Kenya. It also found circumstantial evidence to suggest that senior government officials were aware of planned reprisal attacks by Kikuyu gangs against opposition supporters in several other western towns.

A prominent Kenyan diplomat told The Washington Post that it was an "open secret" that certain Kikuyu politicians provided funding for gangs of young Kikuyu men and ferried them to the town of Naivasha, where they helped carry out one of the most brutal revenge attacks in late January.

"This was not done by ordinary citizens, it was arranged by people with money," said one young man who took part in the attacks, according to the report. "They brought the jobless like me. We need something to eat each day."

Violence following Kenya's disputed Dec. 27 presidential elections is estimated to have killed at least 1,000 people and displaced a half million, with most of the violence taking place across the volatile Rift Valley, where longstanding grievances over land fueled much of the violence.

The violence tarred Kenya's image as one of Africa's political success stories, rekindling tribal animosities and controversy over land use and government corruption. After weeks of international negotiation, Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga reached a power sharing agreement meant to defuse the crisis.

Turnout uneven in Iranian elections

By Nazila Fathi and Graham Bowley
Friday, March 14, 2008

TEHRAN: According to the evidence on the streets of Tehran, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned out in greater numbers than expected to vote for the few reformist candidates in parliamentary elections Friday.

In southern Tehran, where Ahmadinejad has a political base, streets and polling stations were quiet.

In the east of the city, where the president has a residence, people showed up in large numbers, with lines of prospective voters waiting outside the neighborhood's large Al Nabi Mosque.

In the middle-class neighborhoods of central and western Tehran, mosques were crowded as people turned out, and many said they were voting for reformists.

But with most high-profile reformists barred from running by a conservative vetting body, religious conservatives are still expected to tighten their grip on power, and only minor reformist candidates are taking part.

Indeed, the election has largely come down to a contest between conservatives who still support the president and those who have become his opponents.

At a mosque in the western neighborhood of Sadeghieh, 100 people were gathered inside and there was a line of people waiting to vote.

"I am voting because I didn't vote in the two previous elections," said Muhammad Hossein Fozi, 27. "As a result, people I don't like were elected, and their policies have affected my life."

People said they were unhappy about the policies of the government, and in particular cited problems like unemployment. There is much anger over unemployment, inflation and fuel shortages in this oil-rich country and frustration that Ahmadinejad's economic policies have only made the poor poorer and the rich richer.

One supporter of Ahmadinejad, Akbar Moharampour, 52, an architect, said: "I believe those who are in power right now are more concerned about people's situation. I think they have to have another opportunity."

The results of the election are expected to be known by early next week.

Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran and Graham Bowley from New York.

Leading Pakistani Parties to Form Government

Sharif and Zardari Pledge to Reinstate Judges Ousted by Musharraf

By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 10, 2008; A11

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 9 -- The heads of Pakistan's two leading political parties vowed Sunday to form a coalition government and restore the country's embattled judiciary by returning judges deposed last year to the bench within a month.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, widower of former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, called for the country's newly elected Parliament to adopt a resolution reinstalling about 60 judges.

"The restoration of the deposed judges, as it was on the 2nd of November 2007, shall be brought about through a parliamentary resolution to be passed in the National Assembly within 30 days of the formation of the federal government," Sharif said after a marathon meeting between members of his Pakistan Muslim League faction and Zardari's Pakistan People's Party.

The announcement, at a televised news conference in the northern Punjab town of Murree, came as hundreds of lawyers protested in cities across Pakistan to mark the one-year anniversary of a decision by President Pervez Musharraf to remove the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

Chaudhry's removal and the disbarment of dozens of other judges touched off a constitutional crisis and sparked widespread instability in the nuclear-armed nation of 164 million. The political crisis worsened considerably, however, after Musharraf on Nov. 3 declared a state of emergency and placed the chief justice and several other prominent judges and lawyers under house arrest. The next month, after the emergency was lifted, Bhutto was assassinated while campaigning.

In Islamabad, the capital, about 500 lawyers and their supporters marched Sunday to Chaudhry's home to demand an end to his four-month house arrest. Waving black flags, dozens shouted for Musharraf, the former army chief, to be hanged. Several protesters tried to cut through a barbed-wire barricade on the road near Chaudhry's home.

Hundreds of police in riot gear fired tear gas into the crowd.

"This day marks the day last year when the general thought he would get rid of the chief justice, but he was sadly mistaken," said Masood Sharif Khattak, a director of Pakistan's intelligence bureau under Bhutto who participated in the protest. "There's no way this country can move forward on any political path unless and until the judiciary is restored."

Protests for the restoration of the judiciary have become routine since Chaudhry's dismissal. On Saturday, hundreds of black-suited lawyers led by Aitzaz Ahsan, the Supreme Court bar association president, marched in a marketplace in the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi to kick off a week-long protest over the judiciary, dubbed "Black Flag Week."

Ahsan has been campaigning for the restoration of the judiciary since his release two weeks ago from months under house arrest in Lahore. The firebrand lawyer has called for the judges' immediate reinstatement through an executive order. Zardari and Sharif have called for Parliament to decide the judges' fate.

Although winners have been declared for all but a handful of seats in the 342-member National Assembly, Parliament has not yet been convened. Musharraf said Friday that he would summon the first session in two weeks.

Survey Says Iranians Favor Free Election Of Their Top Leader

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 9, 2008; A17

As Iran's brief election campaign for parliament heats up, a new public opinion poll shows that the vast majority of Iranians would like to directly elect their supreme leader in a free vote -- and be able to replace him.

The power of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has long been at the heart of political debate in Iran, because the supreme leader can veto legislation, presidential actions, judicial decisions and candidates for office. Iran's top political position has basically become a lifetime job, even though a panel of 86 religious scholars elected every eight years has the right to dismiss him. Khamenei has held the job since 1989.

But now, almost nine out of 10 voters surveyed want the top political position to be accountable to voters, the poll found.

The survey shows limited interest in the current political choices for parliament, with about one-third of voters preferring neither reformists nor hard-line conservatives. Among those polled, only 8 percent favor conservatives, and 22 percent want to vote for reformers. One out of four voters surveyed in all 30 provinces said they did not know who they would vote for in the election on March 14.

Although more than 80 percent of those polled said they would vote, Iranians are not inspired by any of the candidates, the poll concluded.

The poll was carried out last month by the nonprofit Terror Free Tomorrow and D3 Systems Inc., an international polling and research group.

"The most interesting result is that Iranians are expressing a desire for a more open and democratic system. The fact that they are not enthusiastic or inspired by the ballot choices shows a level of discontent," Kenneth Ballen, president of Terror Free Tomorrow, said.

Conservatives are expected to win the parliamentary contest, in part because hundreds of reformist candidates were disqualified from running. The poll found that more than two-thirds of Iranians believe all reformist candidates should be allowed to run, with 10 percent supporting the decision by a religious council to bar them.

"This survey confirms what any visitor to Iran notices right away, and that is people's utter lack of inspiration with their political system and political candidates," Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

Iran's parliamentary election is a harbinger of the presidential election next year. The United States and the European Union have increased diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran partly in the hope that Iranian voters would turn against hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who faces reelection.

Terror Free Tomorrow is a nonprofit advocacy group whose advisory board members include the former 9/11 Commission co-chairmen -- former Democratic congressman Lee H. Hamilton (Ind.) and former Republican governor Thomas H. Kean (N.J.) -- as well as Republican presidential candidate John McCain and former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). The organization undertakes public opinion polls to determine what policies could be most effective in countering extremism. It is funded by independent, public and family foundations, such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

D3 Systems, based in Vienna, Va., has been polling in Iran since 2004. It carried out the survey of more than 1,000 Iranians by telephone from within the region. The two groups conducted another poll in Iran last June.

Ahmadinejad gets a boost from the new poll. On the economy, 42 percent of Iranians polled believe the economy is headed in the right direction, up from 27 percent in June. The Iranian president's populist economic policies have elicited criticism from parliament and other hard-liners.

More than three-quarters of Iranians polled favor normal relations and trade with the United States, but Iranians are less supportive of concessions to the West than they were in the 2007 poll by the same groups.

The three most important steps Washington could take to improve relations with Tehran are withdrawing its forces from Iraq, increasing visas for study and work in the United States, and a trade deal between the two countries, the poll found.

"The previous poll . . . showed that people were more open to the idea of Iran offering concessions" in exchange for abandoning a nuclear weapons program, Ballen said. "That's dropped from 80 percent to 70 percent."

Just over half of the Iranians polled favor developing nuclear weapons. Since June, the proportion of Iranians who believe that that goal is "not at all important" has dropped from one-third to one-fifth.

At the same time, 70 percent of Iranians told pollsters that they favor an arrangement in which Iran would receive aid and investment in return for allowing inspections and guaranteeing not to develop nuclear weapons.

About six out of 10 Iranians also said they support the Iranian government's military and financial assistance to Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shiite militias and the Palestinian militant movements, the survey reported.

Fewer than one in four Iranians polled said they are willing to recognize Israel even if the Palestinians get full statehood, while 45 percent said they would support the recognition of Israel as part of a broader deal with the United States, down from 55 percent in June.

ETA Is Blamed for a Killing in Spain That Curtails Election Campaigning

By VICTORIA BURNETT and ELAINE SCIOLINO

MADRID — Spain’s two main political parties abruptly curtailed campaigning for Sunday’s general election after a gunman suspected of belonging to the Basque militant group ETA killed a former city councilman in northern Spain on Friday.

The attack and the ensuing disruption of the campaign were particularly disturbing for Spain because of their timing, just short of the fourth anniversary of the March 11, 2004, Islamist bombing of the Madrid commuter train system, which left 191 people dead three days before Spain’s last general election.

Then, the conservative government’s insistence that ETA was responsible for one of Europe’s deadliest terrorist attacks — despite mounting evidence to the contrary — angered voters who felt that they had been misled. They turned out in record numbers to elect the Socialist contender, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as prime minister.

“Today, terrorists tried to interfere in the peaceful demonstration of the will of the people as they go to the polls,” Mr. Zapatero said during a televised statement. “We will not permit it today. We will never permit it.”

The slain man, Isaías Carrasco, 42, a former Socialist representative and father of three, was shot several times in the torso and neck at close range as he left his apartment in the working class town of Arrasate, according to Spanish authorities. Local press reports said that Mr. Carrasco, who was a councilman until last year, worked in a highway tollbooth.

A man wearing a false beard shot Mr. Carrasco before fleeing in a gray car, leaving the victim’s wife and daughter screaming “Daddy!” and “Murderer!” as they bent over his body, according to news service reports and a witness’s account broadcast on CNN’s Spanish language service.

In a televised briefing, Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba blamed a lone ETA shooter for the killing. “ETA has killed a Socialist former councilman,” Mr. Rubalcaba said, calling the shooting a “vile and cowardly act.”

Mr. Rubalcaba, who said last month that he expected ETA to try to stage an attack before the election, did not offer any evidence for his claim that it was responsible for Mr. Carrasco’s death.

Neither Mr. Rubalcaba nor any other Spanish official explained why ETA would have singled out a little-known former local official.

But Kepa Aulestia, a newspaper columnist and former member of ETA, said that Mr. Carrasco would have been an easy target.

“It was clear that ETA wanted to get someone during this campaign and it managed to do that today, probably because it managed to catch someone who was undefended and with no bodyguard,” Mr. Aulestia said in a telephone interview from Bilbao.

Mr. Zapatero cut short a campaign rally in southern Spain and canceled a final campaign appearance scheduled for Friday night in the Madrid suburb of Leganés. The conservative candidate, Mariano Rajoy, canceled rallies in Seville and Madrid.

The decision to halt campaigning, although imposed only hours before it was to end at midnight, was a signal of how large the Madrid bombings and their aftermath loom in the country’s consciousness. The attack on Friday also served as a reminder of one of the most controversial chapters of Mr. Zapatero’s term — his failed attempt to broker peace with ETA after the group declared a cease-fire in March 2006.

What began as a day in which Spanish airwaves were dominated by jubilant politicians on the campaign trail became a series of dramatic and bleak images: The Spanish-language CNN station filled the screen with a photograph of Mr. Carrasco, smiling and sporting a silver earring in one ear. CNN also showed masked Basque antiterrorism police surrounding the scene of the killing and bloody images of destruction in ETA bombings that have taken place over more than a decade.

In an apparent show of unity, Mr. Rajoy, leader of the opposition Popular Party, who has branded Mr. Zapatero as weak for negotiating with ETA, condemned the attack Friday and expressed his support for “our fellow members of the Socialist Party and Spain.” But he underscored the changes he would make to ETA policy if elected.

“Everyone knows what I think,” he said. “Freedom, the people’s rights, their individual rights will return to Spain.”

It was unclear Friday whether the attack would change the political equation in Sunday’s vote.

After the 2004 bombings, the official electoral campaign was also called off. The government launched a different campaign of its own, suppressing mounting evidence that pointed to radical Islamists. The prime minister at the time, José María Aznar, asked Spaniards to join mass antiterrorism rallies the day after the attacks, and the United Nations Security Council, at Spain’s insistence, passed a resolution attributing responsibility to ETA.

Rage at the government was evident on Election Day that year as voters, especially young people who had not planned to vote, flocked to the polls. They said they did so not so much out of fear of terror as out of anger against a government that they said mishandled the crisis.

ETA, which has killed more than 800 people over four decades in a bid for an independent Basque homeland, is considered a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.

Russia: How The Kremlin Manages To Get The Right Results

By RFE/RL analyst Robert Coalson

One day after the March 2 presidential ballot in Russia put the final seal of approval on Dmitry Medvedev's carefully orchestrated win, the head of the country's election commission, Vladimir Churov, had warm words of praise for the vote, saying: "There is no more open, more transparent, and more organized election system than the election system of the Russian Federation."

Churov added that perhaps the greatest innovation of the Russian voting system is the complex, multilayered system used for counting votes, a system he claims virtually precludes the possibility of falsification.

But to independent observers of both the presidential poll and the December 2007 Duma elections, the system seems geared for getting the right results for the Kremlin -- rather than for getting the results right.

Election management in Russia, of course, begins long before election day. It involves the massive distortion of public opinion through the control of the media, the abuse of public office at all levels for political ends, the manipulation of election law and the composition of election commissions, and the use of a variety of means to ensure that only approved parties and candidates appear on ballots at all.

Population Shifts?

One of the clearest macro-manipulations is the compilation of the official voter list. “Vedomosti” reported on March 6 that, according to official figures, there were 107.6 million eligible voters in Russia as of June 2007. By the time of the December legislative elections, that figure had risen to 109.15 million.

The hike might be explained by the fact that Unified Russia wanted as many votes as possible because Duma seats are allocated according to the number of votes. In addition, the federal budget provides parties who pick up more than 3 percent of the vote to qualify for annual state funding of 5 rubles ($0.20) for each vote they received.

By the time of the March presidential election, in which the Kremlin was interested in the highest possible voter turnout rather than a particular number of votes, the official voter list was back down to 107 million, “Kommersant" reported. According to official figures, St. Petersburg lost 11 percent of its voting-age population between December 2007 and March 2008.

But these macro-management means alone cannot ensure the kind of precision that Kremlin politicos seem to require of the results. For instance, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev polled 70.2 percent, according to preliminary official results. Interestingly, that was slightly better than the 70.08 percent the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party polled in the December legislative elections, but slightly worse than the 71.3 percent that President Vladimir Putin garnered in his 2004 reelection. Clearly, the Kremlin wants Medvedev to seem popular. To be more popular than his predecessor, however, would be unseemly.

Something Rotten In The Republics

Andrei Buzin, chairman of the Interregional Association of Voters, told gazeta.ru on March 5 that his monitoring group has noticed an increasing trend of election-day falsification. Such violations have long been de rigueur in the so-called ethnic republics such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan and, especially, in the North Caucasus. In Ingushetia, to take one example, officials reported a startling 98-percent turnout for the Duma elections, but in the weeks following the vote, more than 50 percent of the republic's eligible voters signed statements saying they did not vote.

Following that embarrassment, Election Commission Chairman Churov announced that he would order the installation of video cameras at all Ingush polling stations for the presidential election. But the president of the republic and the chairman of its legislature announced that such measures were unnecessary and no cameras appeared. “Novaya gazeta" journalists in the republic on March 2 asked about the cameras and election officials "simply laughed." Official turnout in the republic on March 2 was 92 percent (with 91 percent of them voting for Medvedev), while independent monitors counted 5,742 voters -- putting estimated turnout somewhere closer to 3.5 percent.

Earlier this month, two bloggers -- a chemist named Maksim Pshenichnikov and a person who goes by the online name Podmoskovnik -- published a damning statistical analysis that used Central Election Commission statistics to shed light on the extent of the fraud in the December Duma elections. The two made a graph of the voter-turnout percentage reported by each polling station. Under normal conditions, one would expect a bell-shaped curve, with few or no polling stations reporting 0 percent turnout and few or none reporting 100 percent. The normal curve would peak at the point representing the national average voter turnout, which for these elections was officially put at 63 percent.

What the bloggers found instead was a curve that began normally on the zero side of the graph and ran upward to a peak of 51 percent. On the right side of the graph, the side representing polling stations reporting higher-than-average turnout, the graph meandered in a spiked line and ended with a peak at 100 percent that was higher even than the number of polling stations reporting the apparent national average of 51 percent. Moreover, they found sharp spikes at all the "round" numbers above that average -- 55, 60, 65, 70, etc. For instance, 633 polling stations reported an 89-percent turnout and 770 reported 91 percent, while 927 reported a nice, round 90 percent. "It is a study that explicitly demonstrates that the results were manipulated," economist Konstantin Sonin told "The Moscow Times."

Moreover, the bloggers created a second graph showing the number of votes reported by each polling station as being cast for each party. The second graph shows nearly normal bell-curves for all of the minor parties in the election, but the curve for the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party nearly precisely follows the curve for overall voter turnout. This seems to indicate conclusively that all the "additional" votes that appeared in contravention of statistical logic were cast for Unified Russia. According to their analysis, Unified Russia should have been given 277 seats in the Duma, instead of the 315 (more than the constitutional majority of 300) that the party was awarded.

'Brazen' Falsifications

Independent monitor Buzin told gazeta.ru that there are increasing signs that brazen election-day manipulation is on the rise across the country, including in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. He noted that polling station No. 1257 in Moscow reported a 100-percent turnout (2,400 registered voters). "Such results have been seen in Karachayevo-Cherkesia and other Caucasian republics, but in the capital -- this is a first," he said. "Reports of such statistics are coming in from cities nationally."

On the evening of March 2, St. Petersburg Yabloko official Maksim Reznik appeared on a small local television station and told of an experiment that he carried out during the presidential vote. He reported that he and six other activists visited seven St. Petersburg polling stations. At each one, they told officials that they were residents of Murmansk without identification or absentee ballots and in each case they were admitted to vote in violation of election rules.

The next day, Reznik was arrested in the middle of the night for allegedly assaulting a police officer and a St. Petersburg court ordered him held without bond pending trial because his previous involvement with opposition protests supposedly demonstrated contempt for the law. He could face up to six years in prison.

Election commission head Vladimir Churov (ITAR-TASS) Buzin told gazeta.ru that on election day, he was at Moscow polling station No. 1513. He said that independent monitors there discovered a fully stuffed ballot box and were guarding it. For a long time, election officials on the site discussed the situation. After a while, a civil-defense alarm sounded and police appeared, ordering the evacuation of the polling station. The monitors were ushered out of the building, although according to election law, in such situations monitors are supposed to be evacuated together with all the ballot boxes. Buzin said that during the evacuation, he spoke personally with the chairman of the Moscow municipal election commission. After the alarm was ended, representatives of the Prosecutor-General's Office appeared and confiscated the suspicious ballot box. Nothing was heard about it again.

"This story once again confirms how all these organs act as one," Buzin concluded. "They have a single leadership, and this combination of all branches of power and state organs enables them to perpetrate rather brazen direct falsifications."

Not Adding Up

“Novaya gazeta" reported this week on the election-day experience of Olga Pokrovskaya, a well-known St. Petersburg lawyer and liberal activist who has served on election commissions in the past. Pokrovskaya told the paper she spent election day monitoring polling station No. 488. She reported spending the entire day there and waiting after polls closed while officials filled out the station's voting protocol. She then asked for and received an officially signed copy of the protocol and accompanied polling-station officials to the territorial election commission, where they were to submit the documents. Pokrovskaya said that she noticed one of the officials was carrying a blank election protocol that had been signed and stamped, in addition to the document that had been shown to Pokrovskaya earlier.

Pokrovskaya later compared the document she had with the official Central Election Commission data for polling station No. 488. Both sets of figures showed 23 votes for Democratic Party leader Andrei Bogdanov, 68 votes for Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and 188 votes for Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Pokrovskaya's document also shows 620 votes for Dmitry Medvedev, while the official tally for Medvedev for that polling station was 1,412. Pokrovskaya showed total turnout (including spoiled ballots and others) as 965, while the official figure is registered as 1,641.

"I suppose similar methods were used at other polling stations as well," Pokrovskaya said. "There were very few observers. At my polling station, for example, there was no one but me."

Lilia Shabanova, executive director of the independent NGO Golos, also monitored the elections and noticed the same trend of more brazen falsification and officials from all levels of government and all agencies working in tandem.

"Administrative resources have always been used," she told “Novaya gazeta," "but when there was political competition in earlier elections, control over the elections was incomparably greater. The commission under [former Central Election Commission head Aleksandr] Veshnyakov came to help at least during local elections, but the current [Central Election Commission] is deaf, blind, and dumb. It does not react to anything; it doesn't want to see or hear anything."

Spain Campaigning Ends After Killing

By PAUL HAVEN
The Associated Press
Friday, March 7, 2008; 8:57 AM

MADRID, Spain -- Both of Spain's major political parties called off all election campaigning nationwide Friday after a former city councilman was shot dead in the Basque region.

The killing raised tensions two days before the general election, bringing an early end to rallies that were supposed to conclude at Friday midnight. There would be no resumption of campaigning before the election, the ruling Socialist party said.

The former councilman Isaias Carrasco was shot in the Basque town of Arrasate as he emerged from his home with his wife and daughter. He died after being rushed to a local hospital, Basque police told The Associated Press. Police said he was shot several times, and Spanish news agency EFE reported the shots were all to the back of his head.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

MADRID, Spain (AP) _ The last time Spaniards voted in national elections, the trauma from the train bombings that left nearly 200 people dead was raw, the perpetrators at large and anger white-hot over suspicions the government was hiding evidence for political gain.

The result: A young Socialist opposition candidate named Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero surged from behind to win power with promises to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq and push through sweeping social changes in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.

Four years later, Zapatero has made good on those pledges and is hoping for a clearer mandate from Sunday's vote, a rematch against the man he beat so unexpectedly back in 2004.

Spain's once robust economy is softening and Zapatero's peace talks with Basque separatists have failed spectacularly, but the 47-year-old prime minister has never trailed in opinion polls and is widely favored to win a narrow victory over conservative candidate Mariano Rajoy.

A trio of recent polls shows Zapatero with a 4 percentage point lead.

Formal campaigning has been brief _ under Spanish law, it is limited to just two weeks _ but remarkably nasty.

During the candidates' first debate on Feb. 25, the two men used a version of the word 'liar' at least 17 times, according to an Associated Press review of the transcript. Their second debate included this exchange:

Rajoy: "You lied because you always lie. You never tell the truth."

Zapatero: "No, sir. No, no, no, no. Never."

Much of the enmity stems from the circumstances in which Zapatero won election back in 2004. Days before the vote, most polls showed Rajoy's Popular Party with a solid lead and Socialist insiders say even they did not expect to win.

But then came the horrific March 11 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1,800, which the outgoing government of conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar initially blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA.

Hours after the bombings, police found an audio tape of Quranic verses in a van outside a station through which the targeted trains had passed.

Two days later _ and just a day before the vote _ authorities found a video made by the perpetrators claiming they did it in allegiance to al-Qaida and in retaliation for Spain's support of the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite the mounting evidence, Aznar and Rajoy stuck to their hypothesis that ETA was behind the bombing. The government was apparently concerned that acknowledging Islamic involvement would underscore their support for the war in Iraq, which was deeply unpopular in Spain.

But the perception of a cover-up did more than that. Angry voters swung behind Zapatero, earning him a surprise victory. However, many conservatives still see his 2004 win as a fluke.

"It is certainly true that in the eyes of a significant proportion of Popular Party voters, Zapatero is tainted with illegitimacy because of the way he won the last elections," said Charles Powell, a history professor at Madrid's San Pablo CEU university.

Zapatero is hoping his re-election under more normal circumstance would put any questions of legitimacy to rest and prove the country is behind the breathtaking social and administrative changes he has enacted since taking office.

Zapatero's Socialists pushed through legislation that made it easier to get a divorce, legalized gay marriage, allowed transsexuals to seek government funding for sex change operations and scrapped plans for obligatory religious education at public schools.

Equally troublesome to conservatives has been his backing of expanded autonomy for independence-minded Spanish regions like Catalonia and the Basque country, which have gained greater control of their finances and other tools of self-rule, and liken themselves to nations within the Spanish state.

Conservatives warn this is the first step on a road that will lead to the breakup of Spain. They have also hit Zapatero hard on what they see as a soft immigration policy that has allowed millions of South Americans, Africans and Eastern Europeans to live and work here _ either legally or illegally _ taking jobs that might otherwise go to Spaniards.

But the real fireworks have been over Zapatero's failed peace talks with the Basque separatist group ETA. The opposition says the prime minister lied to the country by continuing to have indirect contact with the militant group even after it shattered a cease-fire with a deadly Dec. 30, 2006, bombing at Madrid's Barajas airport.

Zapatero has countered that the Popular Party has broken a cardinal rule of Spanish democracy by politicizing terrorism.

Neither candidate has laid out an extensive vision of where they will take the country over the next four years, or how they will deal with a global economic slowdown that has already started to sink Spain's once-soaring property market and reverse the dramatic job gains of recent years.

And despite the evident bad blood between the two men, Rajoy has given no indication he would roll back most of the social changes enacted by the Socialists in recent years.

Although polls show Zapatero ahead, he is unlikely to garner an absolute majority in the 350-seat lower house of parliament, forcing him to seek an alliance with smaller parties, much as he does now.

Church steps into political fray in Spain

Bishops remind Catholic voters of their duty to defend traditional values in Sunday's elections. Socialist Party officials are furious.
By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 5, 2008

MADRID — Spain's most prominent Roman Catholic priests have stepped into the center of a bare-knuckle election campaign here, igniting a firestorm by seeming to tell voters how to cast their ballots.

The powerful Spanish Bishops Conference, in a recent widely disseminated "message to the public," reminded Catholic voters of their duty to defend traditional values and to elect leaders "responsibly" when they go to the polls Sunday. Catholics make up the vast majority in this country.

Without naming a political party, the bishops condemned many of the policies that have been hallmarks of the ruling Socialist Workers Party, such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The policies are opposed by the conservative Popular Party.

"Not all [party] programs are equally compatible with the faith and the demands of Christian life," the bishops admonished.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and other senior officials of the Socialist Workers Party quickly expressed outrage at what they saw as church interference. Next thing you know, complained party Secretary Jose Blanco, priests will be running for office -- and on the Popular Party ticket. Respect the separation of church and state, warned Vice Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega.

The government formally protested to the Vatican, expressing "surprise" and "perplexity" over the statement, which was released several weeks ago as the political season geared up.

The conservative hierarchy of the church has been at odds with the government since the Zapatero administration came to power in elections four years ago and embarked on a broad, aggressive agenda of liberal social reform.

On Tuesday, the bishops conference reaffirmed its firm stance by choosing as its new president one of its more hard-line members, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, 71, to replace the more moderate Bishop Ricardo Blazquez, 65.

Spain's political right wing, historically aligned with the church and in power for a decade leading up to 2004, considered itself unjustly displaced in that year's elections, which followed a devastating terrorist attack. It has fought the Socialist government on nearly every issue.

In addition to recognizing gay marriage and making divorce easier, the government has sought to reduce the influence of the church in public education. This too was condemned by the bishops.

The bishops also seemed to take aim at Zapatero's decision to engage the Basque separatist group ETA in what proved to be an unsuccessful attempt to secure a peace agreement. It was recently revealed that government-sanctioned contacts continued with ETA representatives even after the group ended a cease-fire by detonating a bomb at Madrid's airport in December 2006, killing two.

"A society that wants to be free and just cannot recognize, explicitly or implicitly, a terrorist organization as the political representative of any segment of the population," the bishops said. Nor, they added, could it negotiate with such a group.

Zapatero and his allies cried foul over the church's pronouncements. They wasted no time pointing out that previous Spanish governments had engaged in talks or other contacts with ETA. Among those was Zapatero's predecessor, right-wing former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of the Popular Party, who even employed priests as intermediaries in his dealings with ETA.

For church leaders now to tell the electorate not to vote for a party that talks to ETA was hypocritical, the Socialists charged.

As debate flamed over the church's electoral role, and a few priests distanced themselves from the bishops' advisory, the Popular Party accused the Socialists of overreacting as a way to scare voters who still remember church support for the long fascist dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.

"It's a sterile argument," columnist Ignacio Camacho noted in the conservative ABC newspaper. The Socialists' reactions "come from a victimization that is hard to swallow, that tries to create a self-interested polemic."

Popular Party officials said the Socialists were showing themselves intolerant of opinions that diverge from their own way of thinking and noted that surveys indicated a majority of Spaniards oppose negotiation with ETA.

The Socialists lead the Popular Party by a narrow margin in polls.

The combined forces of the Popular Party and conservative Catholics have managed to fill the streets for huge "pro-family" political rallies, including one in December during which bishops lashed out at the government's agenda. Catholic organizations have launched a petition drive to overturn laws legalizing abortion and vowed to challenge other liberal reforms.

And, historically, the Popular Party has been especially good at turning out its base on election day.

The Socialists, meanwhile, argue that Spain's Catholics are more liberal than the rightists acknowledge.

"I think that the great majority of Spanish Catholics are tolerant and are not fundamentalists," Jesus Caldera, a Cabinet minister who heads the Socialists' electoral program, said in a recent meeting with Madrid-based foreign correspondents.

"There is a clear alliance [of the Popular Party] with the most ultraconservative sector of the Spanish Catholic Church," he said. "We tell the Catholic hierarchy that no one is going to attack them, but we are not going to let them impose their creed."

wilkinson@latimes.com

Special correspondent Cristina Mateo-Yanguas contributed to this report.

Russians elect Medvedev in landslide

Analysts wonder how, or even whether, the new president, Putin's handpicked successor, would share power with his mentor.

By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

4:35 PM PST, March 2, 2008

MOSCOW — Russians elected 42-year-old lawyer Dmitry Medvedev as their new president in a landslide victory, heralding unpredictable times for this huge, oil- and gas-rich land.

With 80% of the ballots counted, the Central Election Commission reported that he had collected 69% of the votes, far outpacing his three challengers.

For eight years, Russia has grown richer and more influential under President Vladimir V. Putin's steady, often steely hand. With Putin now planning to move into the prime minister's post, the greatest and most unanswerable question hanging over Moscow these days is how he and his protege will share power between them. Some observers are skeptical that either will be willing to play second fiddle for long.

Putin, prevented by the constitution from seeking a third term as president, has shown no eagerness to relinquish authority. Instead, he handpicked his successor and indicated months ago that he would become premier in Medvedev's administration, and that the two men would work together in coming years. Putin recently referred to the prime minister's job as the highest executive authority, although as president he ruled supreme.

The image of executive power shared amiably between two leaders has provoked heavy skepticism here. This country of ruthless politics and brutal history has traditionally been ruled by a single strongman, be it a czar, party leader or president.

"The danger lies not just in the traditional incompatibility of two powerful positions, but also in Medvedev's psychological makeup," said Leonid Sedov, senior researcher at Moscow's Levada Center, an independent polling agency. "I don't think he's just a puppet or just a person without his own character. I think he's a stronger man than he seems."

Some of Putin's critics have predicted that he will continue calling the shots, using Medvedev as a compliant tool. Putin may even try to transfer some authority from the presidency to the premiership, others predicted, although he has said he wouldn't consider altering the existing power structure.

"For the time being, the key decisions will be made by both of them," said Sergei Markov, a lawmaker with Putin's United Russia party who's close to the Kremlin. "We don't know what their relations will be later, but for the time being they will be two people with one hand of power."

Despite the pervasive sense of inevitability over Medvedev's rise to the Kremlin, Russians braved the rain and snow to cast their ballots, answering an aggressive push from the government to get out the vote.

Stepan Zayatz, a 64-year-old retired Moscow police officer who trudged to the polls through ankle-deep slush, said that he had come to vote for Medvedev.

"It doesn't make sense to vote any other way," he said. "You can only follow the ruler. The other candidates are just clowns. . . . You need to face reality."

A few hours after the polls closed, Medvedev appeared on an outdoor stage near Red Square. Putin, who has long nurtured Medvedev's career, stood at his side. Thousands of people, many of them members of pro-Kremlin youth groups, thronged before them, jubilant and soaked to the skin.

"We can keep moving down the path set by Mr. Putin," Medvedev told the crowd. "Together we are moving forward. Together we will win."

Medvedev faced three opponents: Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist figure known for controversial rhetoric; and Andrei Bogdanov, a relatively unknown representative of a liberal party.

None of those candidates were given anywhere close to the coverage showered upon Medvedev by the state media. Russian and European election monitors criticized the elections for biased campaign coverage.

Medvedev is a longtime Putin acquaintance who followed the president's path from Leningrad State University all the way to the halls of government in Moscow. He has been sold to voters as the status quo candidate, and so far he has played the part perfectly.

In appearances across the country, Medvedev lavished praise on Putin's eight years in office and carefully avoided striking any policy notes that might clash with the president's agenda. He smiled cheerfully at Putin's side even as he was mocked in cartoons and street corner jokes as the puppet of a powerful master. (A sample joke: Putin and Medvedev sit in a restaurant. Putin: "I'll have the steak." Waiter: "And what about the vegetable?" Putin: "He'll take the steak too.")

But analysts warn that all bets would be off once Medvedev was installed in the Kremlin. He takes office May 7.

Many observers believe that Medvedev has simply been playing along, keeping up the respectful deference expected by his mentor and waiting for his chance to seize the reins. They warn that destabilizing clashes could break out as the two men scrap for power.

"Mr. Medvedev will certainly play his own game," said Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information. "He's bound to change inside himself, just as Putin changed when he assumed power. I'm not at all convinced Putin and Medvedev will manage to preserve good relations.

"No matter how weak Medvedev looks now," he said, "as soon as the doors shut and he's inside, he'll shore up. That's the Kremlin law."

Putin came into office as a virtual unknown, anointed by former President Boris N. Yeltsin. Like Medvedev, Putin's ascent to the Kremlin was attended by whispers that he would never own the job or manage to shake the long shadow of his predecessor.

Russians scoff at that memory now. Putin quickly emerged as a strongman who cannily played the Kremlin clans against one another to consolidate power. Today he is revered, epitomizing stability in the Russian imagination to the degree that many voters seem almost reflexively fearful of his departure from office.

Medvedev and Putin have their differences. Whereas Putin was a former KGB agent, Medvedev is a onetime law professor, businessman and gas executive.

Putin stared at the world through the flinty gaze of a disciplined spy, occasionally punctuated with a sardonic, closed-lip smile. He donned military uniforms and struck manly poses for photographers: shooting pistols, flying combat planes or practicing judo.

Medvedev, by contrast, was photographed this month with the members of his favorite band, Deep Purple. The presumed heir to the presidency grinned goofily among the rock stars, arms thrust forward and two thumbs cocked skyward.

While Putin has been tagged with a reputation for belligerence toward the West, Medvedev is perceived as a slightly softer, more liberal leader.

But Medvedev, currently deputy prime minister, remains a largely untested character. Aside from representing Russia at events such as World Economic Forum meetings, he has virtually no experience with foreign affairs.

Stanislav Belkovsky, president of the National Strategy Institute, contends that Medvedev's international reputation as a moderate was a key reason that he was tapped to take over. His main purpose, Belkovsky says, is to put a friendlier, more outwardly liberal face on the Kremlin to burnish Russia's image among Western governments and corporations.

At home, Belkovsky predicted, the squeeze on democracy carried out under Putin will continue.

"To the West, the language will be softened. Many of the politicians in the West will actually believe he's a liberal alternative to Putin," Belkovsky said. "But as far as domestic policy is concerned, the crackdown on the media and on what remains of the opposition will be even harder."

Belkovsky had invited reporters to Moscow's House of Journalists last week to unveil his new book about Medvedev, titled "Little Evil" in a cheeky reference to the candidate's diminutive height. The day before his book launch, Belkovsky received a call from the House of Journalists. Your event has been canceled, he said they told him. There was no explanation, he said.

"I'm quite sure that if it were a book on Putin himself, it wouldn't have been canceled," he said. Calls to the House of Journalists were not answered.

Intrigue unfolds out of sight here, leaving observers to scrounge for small details about the future relationship between Putin and Medvedev. So minor are the signals from which power shifts must be inferred that lately wristwatches have been discussed.

Putin wears his watch on the right wrist; Medvedev on the left. Kremlin watchers say some of the United Russia party faithful have begun to switch their watches from right wrist to left to signal loyalty to the new chief.

megan.stack@latimes.com

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.

Despite Spotlight, Putin's Heir Still Shadowy

Medvedev Assured of Win, but Many Russians Unsure What Will Follow

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 2, 2008; A01

ST. PETERSBURG -- At the age of 23, Dmitry Medvedev went to a cathedral in this city, then called Leningrad, and was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. Even in the relatively liberal environment of Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union, it was a quiet act of defiance for a postgraduate law student whose prospects depended on not straying too far from the ruling ideology.

"I think it marked the beginning of a new life for me," said Medvedev, 42, in a recent interview with the Russian magazine Itogi.

A year later, in 1989, Medvedev campaigned for Anatoly Sobchak, one of his law professors at Leningrad State University, who was running as an independent candidate for the Congress of People's Deputies and calling for an end to the Communist Party's monopoly on power.

"He was very young, and it was extremely dangerous for his future," Lyudmila Narusova, Sobchak's widow and now a member of the Russian parliament's upper house, said of Medvedev in an interview. "It could have ruined his entire future career, because nobody knew who was going to win. Nevertheless, Medvedev willingly chose this path."

Nineteen years later, Medvedev is about to become Russia's third president, succeeding Vladimir Putin, who has ensured the victory in Sunday's election simply by blessing Medvedev's candidacy. But after a heavily stage-managed campaign, bereft of authentic competition, many Russians wonder whether a Medvedev administration heralds a break with the rule of his popular predecessor or a caretaker government that will consolidate the centralization of power Putin engineered.

Will the democratic dreams of the young Medvedev resurface to challenge the policies he has helped implement as the sidekick of a president who has crushed political pluralism? Or will they emerge again only in speeches, never in practice?

"After the campaign, I can say I know nothing about who he is," said Georgy Bovt, editor in chief of Profil magazine. "He is intelligent, well-bred, educated -- that's all I can say. How is he going to manage the country? We don't know."

Medvedev's campaign declined an interview request. The candidate has been cocooned inside his campaign, taking few questions from anyone outside a select pool of journalists filing uniformly glowing reports.

Medvedev actually claims to have campaigned for only one day in the past two months; the rest of his appearances, he said, were part of his work as first deputy prime minister. The Central Election Commission, explaining the overwhelming coverage of Medvedev on state television compared with the scant attention paid to his opponents, which appeared to violate electoral rules requiring equal access to news media, said the channels weren't covering a candidate but a government minister.

A former law professor, Medvedev has begun to articulate a reverence for the rule of law, which human rights organizations say was applied very unevenly during Putin's tenure. He has also said he will tackle corruption, which Putin failed to do in any comprehensive way.

"We're talking about freedom in all its forms -- personal freedom, economic freedom and, in the end, the freedom of self-expression," Medvedev said in a campaign speech. "One of the key elements in our work in the next four years will be ensuring the independence of the legal system from the executive and legislative branches of power."

But Medvedev's essentially unopposed candidacy is built on Putin's increasingly autocratic system, which has cleared the landscape of any troublesome opponents.

Putin, too, spoke of the primacy of the law in his early years in power and infused his speeches with pledges of fealty to democratic values. Biography, however, proved a better guide to his impulses: A former Soviet spy, he was distrustful of political competition. And if Medvedev has had any concerns about the centralization of power under Putin, he has never voiced them publicly.

The likelihood that Putin will become Medvedev's prime minister has led some to predict that the next president will be a soft-spoken puppet.

"Medvedev will be the glove on the hand of Putin's group," said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst in Moscow. "The parliament is loyal to Putin. The security services are loyal to Putin. The mass media is Putin's. Any independent step by Medvedev will be considered a declaration of war on the current elite, and they will strike back."

Others, however, see a new beginning.

"Behind his external intelligence and mildness, there is a very strong character," Narusova said. "He is very purposeful. It's ridiculous to hear that Putin is going to rule and that Medvedev is going to fulfill his orders.

"I would like to note," she continued, "that from his entire circle, which consists of both hawks and liberals, Putin picked the most liberal figure."

Medvedev has never served in the military and, unlike many of Putin's other intimates, has no background in the security services. He speaks of a Russia that is great and demands respect, but with none of the slashing vim of a Putin speech.

"The university, with all its traditions, is his cradle," said Igor Bunin, head of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. "His challenge is to lead Russia into the group of civilized countries. This idea is more important to Medvedev than the greatness of the country alone."

Medvedev was born in September 1965 to intellectuals with modest places in the Soviet hierarchy. "Both received degrees with honors, but their careers somehow didn't take off," he has recalled of his parents. His father was a physics professor, and his mother taught Russian as a foreign language.

Medvedev attended a local public school in Leningrad, where he met his future wife, Svetlana, in seventh grade. They now have a 12-year-old son, Ilya.

Medvedev's memories of the Soviet past, as he told Itogi magazine, include his dreams of getting a pair of Levi's or Wrangler bluejeans or a copy of "The Wall," by the rock band Pink Floyd. He remains a fan of the kind of driving, grandiose rock performed by groups such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. His latest passion is his iPhone.

In 1982, he entered Leningrad State University's law school -- traditionally a path to the security services, the diplomatic service and the Soviet ministries. Other graduates of the school include Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and Putin, who was recruited by the KGB in his senior year.

Medvedev, however, pursued an academic career. He "was an A student from the beginning to the end," said Marina Mitina, a former fellow student. "My other impression of him was his modesty. Modest, but with great self-confidence."

Medvedev was one of three students in his year invited to study at the postgraduate level and become a professor. "He had quite a reserved and strict manner of teaching," said Sergey Belov, a former student in Medvedev's class on Roman law. "There were very few jokes in his classes, partly because of the subject, but to a large extent it was connected with his own nature. He was very demanding."

Putin and Medvedev met through Sobchak and formed a bond that Putin later described as "comradeship." He calls Medvedev "Dima," the familiar diminutive of Dmitry.

In 1990, while still with the KGB, Putin became an assistant to the president of the university, responsible for international outreach. At that time, Sobchak was chairman of the Leningrad City Council. He became the first mayor of St. Petersburg in 1991, and both Putin and Medvedev worked for their former professor, sharing a desk and managing the city's committee for foreign liaison.

In 1996, after Sobchak lost a mayoral election, Putin went to Moscow and began his remarkable ascent in the administration of President Boris Yeltsin, first heading the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB, and then becoming prime minister.

When Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999, Putin became acting president. He was elected to his first four-year term in March 2000.

In 1999, Putin, then prime minister, brought Medvedev to Moscow as his deputy chief of staff. Medvedev later managed Putin's first election campaign, became a deputy chief of the presidential staff and was appointed chairman of Gazprom, the energy company noted for its bloat and insider deals. In 2003, he became Putin's chief of staff.

Under Medvedev's chairmanship, Gazprom has become a state behemoth with profits last year of $25 billion. But the natural gas exporter's turnaround has not been without controversy. The company has been accused of serving as a political bludgeon to intimidate Russia's neighbors and of strong-arming its way into potentially highly lucrative foreign-controlled enterprises such as Royal Dutch Shell's $22 billion oil and natural gas project in Russia's Far East.

Some observers, however, believe Medvedev acted as the state's legal caretaker at Gazprom -- an executive who scrutinized the fine print in contracts but did not set policy.

"Gazprom was always Putin's personal company," said Vladimir Milov, head of the Institute of Energy and a former deputy energy minister under Putin. "Putin, not Medvedev, decided everything, and to a very detailed extent."

For all the positions he has held, including as legal counsel for a timber firm in the 1990s, Medvedev remains a man of modest means, according to the recent income declaration he was required to make as a presidential candidate. He listed his assets as $113,000 in savings, an apartment in Moscow and a Volkswagen Golf registered in his wife's name.

Medvedev emerged as a potential successor to Putin when he was appointed first deputy prime minister in November 2005 and given the task of reforming such key troubled sectors as health care, education, agriculture and housing. State-controlled media have portrayed his management of what are called the national projects as an unqualified success.

But in a lengthy report on the Putin years, Milov, the energy expert, and Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader, dismissed the projects as "the replacement of systematic reform by random, one-off, modest injections of cash which do not really solve anything."

None of this has been discussed in the campaign, for the simple reason that Medvedev didn't debate any of his opponents. The three of them squared off on television without him -- at 7 in the morning.

East: The 'Leader for Life' Governance Model

By Christopher Walker

Russia - First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev President Vladimir Putin (R) attend the all-Russian Congress of the Councils of Municipalities of the Constituent Territories in Moscow, 23Oct2007
Handing over the reins
(epa)
With Russia's presidential election on March 2, "Operation Successor," the Kremlin's finely orchestrated plan to hand power to a dependable ally of Vladimir Putin, is reaching its crowning moment.





Two months ago, on December 10, Putin endorsed soft-spoken and uncharismatic First Deputy Prime Minster Dmitry Medvedev as his chosen successor. The next day, Medvedev made it known that he would support Putin becoming Russia's prime minister. Then, a week later, Putin completed the circle by agreeing to become prime minister if the 42-year-old Medvedev were elected president, an outcome that is effectively guaranteed in Russia's tightly controlled political system.

Putin had for some time coyly hinted that he would retain an influential role for himself, indicating on November 13 -- before December's parliamentary elections -- that a strong performance by the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party would give him the "moral right" to keep a grip on power after he reached his constitutionally mandated two-term limit in 2008. Unified Russia unsurprisingly won a crushing victory on December 2 in what observers deemed to be patently unfair elections. This elaborate political choreography seems designed to craft a new and enduring role for Putin at the pinnacle of Russia's politics.

In his presidential news conference on February 14, 2008, Putin indicated his view on the matter, saying, "The premiership is not a transitional post." Speaking of the goals he set for Russia's development through the year 2020, Putin added, "If I can see that in this capacity [of prime minister] I can fulfill these goals, I will work as long as possible."

The Kremlin's succession rollout is noteworthy for its meticulousness, but Putin's project to retain political dominance represents part of a broader pattern in which the leaders of a regionally diverse and strategically relevant set of states are attempting to secure unchecked power. By pushing opposing voices to the sidelines and undercutting independent institutions, these rulers are doggedly pursuing a deeply illiberal model of governance: the leader for life.

Dodgy Referendums

A critical mass of "leaders for life" is entrenched in the former Soviet Union, where the prevailing method for retaining power has been the orchestration of referendums to lift constitutionally prescribed term limits.

For instance, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who has ruled that country since 1990, pushed through constitutional changes last August that exempt him from term limits. He had already extended his term through a referendum in 1995. On August 18, 2007, Nazarbaev's party won nearly 90 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, sweeping all remaining opposition forces from the country's legislature. The constitutional changes in 2007 paved the way for Nazarbaev to remain in power indefinitely.

In Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who first came to power in 1994, engineered a vote in October 2004 that removed presidential term limits. Lukashenka went on to receive 83 percent of the vote in April 2006 elections that the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights deemed neither free nor fair. With restraints no longer in place, the Belarusian leader has signaled his intention to run again in 2011.

In Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon in 2003 pushed through a referendum that amended the constitution and opened the door for him to remain in power until 2020. Rahmon was head of state from 1992 to 1994, when he was elected president. A constitutional change in 1999, when he was reelected, increased presidential terms from five to seven years. In the 2006 presidential election, he was credited with 80 percent of the vote.

Uzbekistan's constitution currently states that the president is permitted to serve only two seven-year terms. President Islam Karimov, who assumed power as first secretary of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic's Communist Party in 1989, was elected president of independent Uzbekistan in 1992. In 1995, Karimov extended his presidential term until 2000. He was reelected in 2000 for another five-year term, but prolonged it to seven years through a national referendum in January 2002.

While his peers in post-Soviet states have at least made the effort to hold managed referendums that would extend their terms, Karimov dispensed with such legal niceties and in December 2007 stood again for reelection, ignoring the constitutional prohibition. The Uzbek leader, whose regime has expunged independent news media and civil society, faced no genuine opposition in the poll (in fact, all three "challengers" endorsed his candidacy). In the end, he was credited with 90 percent of the vote.

Keeping It In The Family

Other leader-for-life systems feature a dynastic twist. Former Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev cleared the path for his son, Ilham, to carry on his legacy once the aging president proved too ill to rule himself. A 2002 referendum altered the presidential succession process so that the prime minister, rather than the speaker of parliament, would become acting president if the president resigned or became incapacitated. Ilham Aliyev was named prime minister soon thereafter. As Heydar Aliyev's health declined further in 2003, he withdrew his candidacy for reelection, allowing his son to coast to victory with 76 percent of the vote.

This phenomenon can be found beyond the former Soviet Union. In Syria, family rule has apparently been institutionalized. In Egypt and Libya, where the sitting leaders' tenures are measured in decades rather than years, conditions are also ripe for handing the presidency from father to son. In Cuba, a fraternal handoff of power is being completed.

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, in power for nearly three decades, has presided over one of the most catastrophic societal implosions in recent history, and is now dragging what remains of his country into an economic, political, and social morass. According to government reports, Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate reached a mind-boggling 66,000 percent in December 2007, although some observers believe that this figure may understate the true magnitude of the problem. Mugabe, who turns 84 on February 21, is looking to secure a sixth term in office in elections to be held on March 29.

In December, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought to push through a referendum on a new constitution that would have dramatically expanded his powers and done away with presidential term limits. This initiative was narrowly defeated. Chavez said after the vote, however, that his plans were only derailed "for now" and that his proposals to reform the constitution remained "alive." Despite growing public dissatisfaction with his rule, Chavez has stated his ambition to remain in power until 2050, when he will be 95 years old.

In Russia, the Kremlin's current succession gambit has largely adhered to the letter of the constitution, but the document's spirit is certainly being tested. Dmitry Medvedev is poised to assume the presidency, while Vladimir Putin will swap his current post for that of prime minister. The net result of this managed transfer of power is that there has been no meaningful debate of policy issues among a diverse range of political forces. The Russian public remains disconnected from the small elite that determines who holds and uses power.

Such controlled and insular politics clearly have profound drawbacks. The leader-for-life system creates a zero-sum, winner-takes-all approach to governing. And with unchecked power comes unchecked corruption. In fact, "hyper-corruption" is the soft underbelly of this model, in which accountability and transparency are all but nonexistent. It is no surprise that all of the countries in question are trapped at the bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. For example, despite Putin's ambition to create a "dictatorship of law" and the prominence of anticorruption initiatives on the Kremlin's policy agenda, the scourge of corruption in Russia has grown in recent years. INDEM, a policy institute in Moscow, estimates that bribery and graft in Russia are now at the level of some $300 billion per year.

The oppressive dominance of the leaders for life smothers the institutions -- an independent judiciary, free media, and political opposition, among others -- that are essential not only for tackling massive corruption but also for improving the quality of public policy, thus preventing meaningful reform in the spheres of education, health, and public infrastructure.

For all of its obvious flaws, however, the leader-for-life phenomenon may have some staying power, especially in resource-rich states such as Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, where otherwise brittle regimes are cushioned by oil prices hovering around $100 per barrel. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the wave of democratization that washed across much of the globe in the last generation seemed to signal that life-presidencies had been cast onto the ash heap of history. Their survival suggests that this retrograde form of governance is more resilient than previously imagined.

(Christopher Walker is director of studies at Freedom House.)

After Fidel: A Guide to the Players

By Tim Padgett and Dolly Mascarenas

There's rarely anything newsworthy in the stultifying proceedings of Cuba's rubber-stamp National Assembly. But, perhaps for the first time in half a century, this Sunday's session actually packs some drama. The ailing, 81-year-old Fidel Castro this week announced his resignation after 49 years as President, declaring on Friday that he has promised himself a vacation. Now, the Assembly is expected to select his younger brother, Raul Castro, 76, as his successor. (Raul has served as interim President since the summer of 2006, when major intestinal surgery sidelined Fidel.)

But just as important as Raul's ascent is the question of which figures in Cuba's opaque leadership structure will rise with him — and who looks set to fade along with Fidel. To signal the passing of the revolutionary torch from old guard to new, the Assembly may select economy czar Carlos Lage, 56 — who shares Raul's visions of more capitalist, China-style reforms — as the First Vice President, making him the No. 2 man in Havana. Or the post could go to someone loyal to Fidel's more orthodox socialism, such as National Assembly Speaker Ricardo Alarcon, 70. That combination would strike a balance between the Raulistas and the Fidelistas while Fidel is still alive, but would also dull the prospects for meaningful political reform, at least until he dies.

Either way, most analysts predict the theme of the Assembly session will be youth — such as it is at the top of Cuba's communist power structure — especially the promotion of younger generals in the armed forces, which are still run by Raul and which control much of the economy.

Whatever emerges at the Assembly, Fidel Castro's resignation has opened up an unprecedented moment of political uncertainty — and competition — within the ranks of the ruling Communist Party. Herewith, TIME.com's guide to those among the Cuban elite worth watching on Sunday and beyond:

Fidel Castro: He may be stepping down as president and in ill health, but he's still a charismatic factor and still holds an important position in Cuba as head of the Communist Party. He retains a following on the island and is almost certainly pressing Raul to include some of his loyalists in the future government.

Raul Castro: Sunday's session is his coming-out party as Fidel's replacement as President of the Council of State, and perhaps also as President of the Council of Ministers (Cuba's Prime Minister). But despite 49 years as Fidel's No. 2 and military chief, Raul is a pragmatist who possesses none of his brother's bearded magnetism. Forging a legitimate bond with Cuba's 11 million people, as a result, is his toughest task — and how he orchestrates the new state hierarchy this weekend will be his first test.

Ramiro Valdes: Valdes is the most powerful Fidelista with whom Raul will have to deal. The 75-year-old former Interior Minister has been at Fidel's side since the Cuban Revolution was launched in 1953. He and Raul do not see eye to eye regarding reform, but they have to work with each other. Valdes is the Information and Communications Minister, whose purview includes control of the Internet in Cuba — a fairly important job in any modern totalitarian state.

Carlos Lage: The pediatrician-turned-economist and a Vice President of the Council of State, he is the architect and ambassador of Raul's more market-oriented economic blueprint. "He projects the image of a younger, more collegial, civilian and modern leadership," says University of Miami Cuba expert Brian Latell, author of After Fidel. Widely expected to receive the Council of State's First Vice President post.

Ricardo Alarcon: The leader of the National Assembly and former ambassador to the United Nations could be competition for Lage. But Alarcon's stature took a significant hit this month when a video surfaced showing him flummoxed by a university student publicly hectoring him with questions about Cuba's economic dysfunction. Alarcon may well be kicked upstairs to a largely ceremonial Vice President's post.

General Abelardo Colome: A Council of State Vice President and Interior Minister, Colome, 68, is a military hero and Raul's right-hand man. Like Valdes, he has served the Castro brothers since the early 1950s. Nicknamed "Furry," he may replace Raul as Defense Minister.

Felipe Perez Roque: Cuba's 42-year-old Foreign Minister is widely considered a Fidel pit bull — a leader of the young, ideologically zealous Fidelista cohort known as "los Taliban." But Raul is said to distrust, if not dislike, the electrical engineer. Still, as one of Fidel's favorites, Perez is likely to remain a player for now, and could win a Vice President's spot.

General Alvaro Lopez Miera: Like Colome, the 63-year-old armed forces chief of staff Lopez is a fiercely loyal Raulista. He is also widely touted as the next Defense Minister, particularly since he's relatively younger than other top generals.

Mariela Castro: Raul's daughter, 45, heads the National Sex Education Center and is a strong proponent of social liberalization in Cuba — for example, she favors reversing the official harassment of homosexuals that her Uncle Fidel long condoned. She is considered a critical link to Cuban youth.

Colonel Luis Alberto Rodriguez: Also in his 40s, Rodriguez is Raul's son-in-law (married to his eldest daughter Debora), and analysts believe he's being groomed to eventually take over GAESA, Cuba's multi-billion-dollar, military-run business conglomerate.

Abel Prieto: The popular, long-haired Culture Minister, 57, has positioned himself with Raul and become an outspoken backer of stepped-up public debate on Cuba's political system. Another key ally in charisma-challenged Raul's efforts to reach the island's youth.

General Julio Casas: As Raul's Defense Vice Minister, Casas, 72, runs GAESA, whose dealings with foreign investors have kept Cuba's post-Cold War economy afloat. He's Raul's second-in-command, but is said to be ill, and will probably stay atop GAESA rather than take over the Defense Ministry.

General Ulises Rosales: Another loyal Raulista, Rosales, 65, heads the sugar industry, one of Cuba's most vital operations. But he's considered a longshot Defense Minister candidate.

Esteban Lazo: One of the few Afro-Cubans in the top echelon, despite the fact that Cuba's black population is one of the revolution's most loyal constituencies. Lazo, 63, is a Vice President responsible for education policy. Considered a favorite of the Castro brothers because of his peasant roots, he is one of six officials listed by Fidel in 2006 to be in line to succeed him; but he's unlikely to rise much higher.

Jose Ramon Balaguer: A doctor who fought in the Sierra Maestra with the Castros in the 1950s, Balaguer, 75, is Health Minister and another of the six listed by Fidel. A Fidelista limited by his age.

Jose Ramon Machado: Even older than Balaguer, Machado, 77, a doctor and longtime Castro sidekick, shares education duties with Lazo and is another of the six listed by Fidel. (The other three are Lage, Perez and Francisco Soberon, below.) Part of Raul's inner circle, but like Balaguer he may be too old to be a factor anymore.

Francisco Soberon: One of Lage's most trusted fellow technocrats, Soberon, 63, is the Central Bank chief who in 2004 helped produced Cuba's first fiscal surplus in decades.

Otto Rivero and Hassan Perez: Young Communist leaders (both in their 30s) who may be even more crucial bridges to Cuba's youth than either Prieto or Mariela Castro. Fidel recently made Rivero a Council of State Vice President; Hassan Perez heads the University Students Federation. Their factional loyalties aren't as clear; nor are the posts they're likely to win from this National Assembly.

Jorge Bolanos: Cuba's de facto ambassador to the U.S., Bolanos, 71, is thought to represent Raul's less ideological foreign policy strategy — including hints at improving relations with Washington.

Fernando Remirez de Estenoz: Bolanos's predecessor in the U.S. is a doctor who heads international relations for the powerful Central Committee of Cuba's Communist Party. Speaks fluent English and, like Bolanos, is considered an important interlocutor with the U.S.