BHHRG

No-one inside Uzbekistan and few outside is the answer to the first part of this question if you believe the Western media, and almost everyone in Uzbekistan opposes the regime according to the same interpretation. The idea that “Everyone”, or at least everyone in Uzbekistan apart from his henchmen opposes the President is simplistic propaganda. Things are much more complicated than anti-Karimov propaganda suggests. There is a lot of evidence that Uzbek society is not as unanimous as glib media reports of The People versus The Tyrant suggest.
The Russian Central Asian analyst, Andrei Grozin, argued that the Karimov regime had structural supports as well as opponents: “The system that has developed since Uzbekistan gained independence is not a superstructure, which is not inherent to Uzbek society. The regime would not have maintained itself on guns alone and on the will of Islam Karimov, if it did not have the wide support of considerable groups of society. I am very skeptical about democratizing Uzbekistan and the Fergana Valley in particular. Mass consciousness there is for the large part is not disposed towards modernization. Values accepted worldwide are often not applicable here.”[1]

The New World Order’s loyal chorus let out a sigh of relief.[1] On the day after the vote, Reuters declared, "Macedonia was a rung higher on the ladder to EU and NATO… Nudged by Washington and cajoled by Brussels, most Macedonians stayed away from the polls on a rainy Sunday, dooming what the West had viewed as a retrograde step.,"[2] The result of the referendum confirmed the tribal totalitarianism of the Albanian community in Macedonia. Whereas the ethnic Macedonian population was divided roughly in to two halves, one voting the other boycotting, the Albanians of Macedonia acted as one conformist bloc. Civil society with its pluralism and inherent splits across ethnic and religious lines seems as far away from Macedonia’s Albanians as ever.

Is he the Tories’ Harry Potter or Wendell Willkie?

The Manufacturing of the Candidate

As Tony Blair’s power-base in Britain wobbles despite winning a third successive general election (but with only 36% of the popular vote) Britain’s media is hailing a bright new star in its political firmament. On 6th December, the world’s oldest political party, Britain’s Conservatives (also known as Tories) chose 39 year-old David Cameron as their leader. Until the last few weeks, “David who?” would have been the reaction of most of his fellow citizens. What a turnaround![1] Three months ago David Cameron was barely known to the British public. In September, 2005, only 4% of a BBC poll saw him as the best man to lead the Conservative Party. Even on the eve of the Tory Party Conference in October, only 13% of a nationwide poll backed Cameron. Yet after a single television focus group on BBC 2’s “Newsnight” programme, 39% of Tory activists polled suddenly put the 38-year-old Shadow Education Secretary ahead of all his rivals for the leadership of the Conservative Party.[2]

BHHRG sent observers to monitor the conduct of the election itself held on 14th December 2003. As TRNC is an unrecognised state, official monitoring organizations like the OSCE as well as EU bodies were unwilling to send representatives to observe the poll. However, a group from the University of Oslo had been in TRNC for several months monitoring the campaign and a small number of German SPD MPs (including a member of Turkish Cypriot origin) attended the election itself. There were also two British observers, acknowledged supporters of TRNC.
7 parties contested the 50 seats in TRNC’s parliament. Elections are conducted by a complicated system of proportional representation which allows not only a vote for the bloc but also a preferential vote which can be for candidates from other parties. There is a 5% threshold for entry into parliament. By polling day, 141,479 electors had been registered.

The official view is that Russia has ‘fought all the way’ to preserve its sovereignty and protect the rights of Kaliningrad’s inhabitants. As negotiations between Russia and the EU over the transit issue dragged on during 2002 the rhetoric coming from Moscow was uncompromising. The EU’s visa plans for Kaliningrad were “worse than the Cold War” and would “divide the sovereignty of Russia”. Mr. Putin, whose in-laws come from Kaliningrad oblast, “flatly rejected the visa plan” and Russia “will do its utmost to guarantee totally the rights of its citizens living in Kaliningrad”.[1]

Florida has perhaps witnessed more controversy than any other state in America on the issue of redistricting, the process of redrawing the boundaries of legislative districts due to population changes (see Lucy Morgan, “Redistricting squabbles a sign of fights to come,” St. Petersburg Times, June 22, 2002). An editorial from the Naples Daily News from July 2002 reads as follows:
We wondered who Florida lawmakers were listening to when they carved the state into new U.S. House districts.
Actually, we did know. They were listening to friends in high political places — Florida’s big cities and Washington. We were asking rhetorically, because we knew lawmakers were not listening to Southwest Florida constituents who wanted to stick together.