South Korea: Twitter generation may give liberals upset win | euronews

South Korea’s liberal opposition, bolstered by the under-40s and power of social media, could spring a surprise win in this week’s parliamentary elections despite opinion polls that show it tied with the ruling conservatives. Experts say traditional pollsters base their projections on owners of fixed telephone lines, whereas people in their 20s and 30s, who form 37 percent of the voting population in the world’s most wired country, rarely use them. The young, more likely to carry a Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPhone in their pockets, are mostly liberal and their views are expressed and spread online, often by their smartphones.

Mexico: Presidential Candidates Kick off Campaigns | ABC News

The four candidates for Mexicos presidency officially launched their campaigns for the July 1 election on Friday, all of them promising change. Enrique Pena Nieto, who is running for the Institutional Revolutionary Party that ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, used the word “change” 26 times in his first official campaign speech. “Mexico is clear on what it wants, and it doesnt want more of the same,” Pena Nieto declared in the western city of Guadalajara. “It wants to exit this stage of shadow and darkness and enter a new stage of light and hope. “Pena Nietos focus on “a grand crusade for change” and “the change we want” echoed the 2008 campaign slogan of President Barack Obama, “change we can believe in.” It was unclear whether that echo was intentional.

China: Hong Kong’s Scandalous Election Too Much For China | WSJ

With less than two weeks to go, Hong Kong is gripped by an unusually colorful brawl for its top political job – but if you lived just across the border, you might not know it. Though Beijing finds both the city’s two frontrunners acceptable, it doesn’t like the unfolding battle of campaign smears, scandals and public criticism, and appears to be silencing reports on the mainland. Media outlets should refrain from “reporting, hyping or discussing” Hong Kong’s Chief Executive election, China’s Central Propaganda Department said last week during the National People’s Congress according to a directive posted (in Chinese) on University of California, Berkeley-based blog China Digital Times. Anything that needs reporting, the directive declared, “must be approved by the Office of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs.”

China: Taiwan Vote Stirs Chinese Hopes for Democracy – NYTimes.com

There was another winner in the election this weekend that handed President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan a second term in office — the faint but unmistakable clamor for democracy in China. Thanks in large part to an uncharacteristically hands-off approach by Chinese Internet censors, the campaign between Mr. Ma and his main challenger was avidly followed by millions of mainland Chinese, who consumed online tidbits of election news and biting commentary that they then spit out far and wide through social media outlets.

China: Taiwan elections will ‘shock’ China into changing: scholar | CNA

Taiwan’s democratic elections, widely watched in China, will spur the Chinese people to demand reforms and Chinese authorities will be “shocked” into changing their current practices, a mainland Chinese scholar said Saturday. Wang Weinan, a research fellow at Shanghai Academy of SocialScience, said mainland Chinese people are “envious” of Taiwan people’s right to choose their national leaders andparliamentarians. Given the increasing exchanges between the people across the Taiwan Strait and the multiple channels through which the Chinese people can obtain information about Taiwan, more and more Chinese are viewing Taiwan in a favorable light, Wang said.

Russia: Election results will stand, Vladimir Putin spokesman says | Telegraph

Dmitry Peskov told the AFP news agency: “Even if you add up all this so-called evidence, it accounts for just over 0.5 percent of the total number of votes.
“So even if hypothetically you recognise that they are being contested in court, then in any case, this can in no way affect the question of the vote’s legitimacy or the overall results.”

His comments followed an order from President Dmitry Medvedev for election authorities to look into reports of vote-fixing after the ruling party’s narrow victory sparked the largest protest rallies since the 1990s. Mr Medvedev was roundly humiliated however after his Facebook page, in which he posted a message denouncing Saturday’s 50,000-strong rally in Moscow, was flooded by protesters criticising the Russian president.

The post, which came on the same day that the controversial head of the elections commission avoided an attempt to remove him, sparked disbelief and disgust and within two hours more than 3,500 people had posted comments, the vast majority overwhelmingly negative.

Russia: Tens of Thousands Protest in Moscow, Russia, in Defiance of Putin | NYTimes.com

Tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets in Moscow on Saturday shouting “Putin is a thief” and “Russia without Putin,” forcing the Kremlin to confront a level of public discontent that has not been seen here since Vladimir V. Putin first became president 12 years ago. The crowd overflowed from a central city square, forcing stragglers to climb trees or watch from the opposite riverbank. “We exist!” they chanted. “We exist!”

Opposition leaders understood that for a moment they, not the Kremlin, were dictating the political agenda, and seemed intent on leveraging it, promising to gather an even larger crowd again on Dec. 24.

Saturday’s rally served to build their confidence as it united liberals, nationalists and Communists. The event was too large to be edited out of the evening news, which does not ordinarily report on criticism of Mr. Putin. And it was accompanied by dozens of smaller rallies across Russia’s nine time zones, with a crowd of 3,000 reported in Tomsk, and 7,000 in St. Petersburg, the police said.

The protests certainly complicate Mr. Putin’s own campaign to return to the presidency. He is by far the country’s most popular political figure, but he no longer appears untouchable and will have to engage with his critics, something he has done only rarely and grudgingly.

Russia: Crowds gather for Moscow protests | BBC News

Thousands of protesters have gathered in Moscow in a show of anger over disputed parliamentary polls. The opposition says the protest – on an island just south of the Kremlin – could become the largest the country has seen in two decades. Smaller rallies have taken place in cities across the country.

Protesters allege there was widespread fraud in Sunday’s polls – though the ruling United Russia party saw its share of the vote fall sharply. Hundreds of people have been arrested during anti-Putin protests over the past week, mainly in Moscow and St Petersburg. At least 50,000 police and riot troops were deployed in Moscow ahead of Saturday’s protests.

Authorities have permitted up to 30,000 to attend the demonstration dubbed “For Fair Elections”. Thousands have turned out for rallies in cities across the Urals and Siberia and as far east as Vladivostok. The protesters have got one demand – for the elections to be held again. Nobody believes they were free and fair. Many are also asking that the head of the election commission stands down, and some are going even further and demanding that Vladimir Putin himself resigns.

There’s a real sense of anger – and although the numbers are not that big in global terms, in Moscow terms this is a very, very significant demonstration. This number simply haven’t come out onto the streets of Moscow since 1990s. It should not be underestimated what a significant moment this is. It may not deal a fatal blow to Mr Putin’s government, but it is certainly the most severe wake-up call he has received during 12 years in power.

Russia: Will Charges Of Election Fraud Prompt A ‘Russian Spring’? | Forbes

This YouTube video, according to a Russian blogger who shot it and posted it online, shows a deputy chairman of one of the polling places in Moscow, a member of United Russia party, stealing the ballots at the end of the voting day without following the procedure for the vote count and registering the official results.

Shot during Russian elections last Sunday, this video is one of many examples of alleged election fraud that went viral, and started anti-government protests in Russia. All week crowd-sourced internet television, bloggers, Twitterers, youtubers and facebookers share information about upcoming protests, photos, videos, capturing mass arrests during the two-day rally in Moscow that followed the election results, showing to the world heavily armed riot police with water cannons. More Russian mass protests against the election results are scheduled for this Saturday: up to 30,000 people are allowed to gather in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square, and 11 other cities in Russia also received official permits. The internet seems to be exploding from the information exchange and attempts to organize demonstrations and to warn about possible provocations.

The wave of twitter revolutions last year swept over Egypt, Tunis, and Iran, and now has finally reached Russia. Fighting against oppressive regime of Putin’s “managed democracy” with twitter and social networking sites seems like an appropriate thing to do in today’s technological world, where citizen journalism flourishes. In the Middle East social media was a big part of the revolutionary awakening during the so-called “Arab Spring”. Could that be the same thing is happening in Russia?

Russia: Protests continue in Moscow, as Gorbachev calls for nullifying elections | The Washington Post

An anti-government demonstration planned for Saturday was drawing strong support in Russia, as supporters of Prime Minister Vladi­mir Putin staged their own rally in the capital and police announced hundreds more arrests in Tuesday night’s protest against corruption. More than 14,000 people have signed up for Saturday’s demonstration in Revolution Square to protest the recent legislative elections, according to a Facebook page announcing the event. Western monitors say the voting was flawed by ballot-stuffing and other irregularities.

As the number of people pledging to attend the demonstration grew, Moscow officials shut down Revolution Square for construction, the New Times Web site reported. The Web site published a photograph of barriers erected to close off the square, near a statue of Karl Marx, and quoted a city hall representative as saying the decision to work on the square was made Wednesday. The city has employed construction before to limit or prevent protests.

Also Wednesday, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Russian authorities should nullify the election results because of fraud concerns. Prime Minister Vladi­mir Putin’s ruling United Russia party won with less than 50 percent of the vote, a far weaker showing than in past years.

Russia: Social media makes anti-Putin protests snowball | Reuters

Artyom Kolpakov used to shrug when he came across occasional appeals on social media sites to protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his government. “I didn’t see the point really,” he said.

But something changed when, clicking through amateur videos and online testimonies documenting cases of ballot-stuffing and repeat voting, he saw others shared his outrage at Putin’s party’s victory in Sunday’s parliamentary election. On Monday evening, Kolpakov, 38, was among several thousand Russians who took to the streets of Moscow in the biggest opposition protest in years.

Such protests against Putin’s rule, as president from 2000 to 2008 and as prime minister since then, have rarely drawn more than about 200 people, some of them Soviet-era dissidents and others activists in marginalized opposition groups.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi king grants voting rights to women | CBS News

Saudi King Abdullah announced Sunday that the nation’s women will gain the right to vote and run as candidates in local elections to be held in 2015 in a major advancement for the rights of women in the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom. In an annual speech before his advisory assembly, or Shura Council, the Saudi monarch said he ordered the step after consulting with the nation’s top religious clerics, whose advice carries great weight in the kingdom.

“We refuse to marginalize the role of women in Saudi society and in every aspect, within the rules of Sharia,” Abdullah said, referring to the Islamic law that governs many aspects of life in the kingdom.

The right to vote is by far the biggest change introduced by Abdullah, considered a reformer, since he became the country’s de facto ruler in 1995 during the illness of King Fahd. Abdullah formally ascended to the throne upon Fahd’s death in August 2005.

Bahrain: Poll candidates in Bahrain receive threats | Khaleej Times

Ten by-election candidates in Bahrain have received threats from anonymous election boycotters, according to human rights group here. The Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society said that candidates received threats through emails, text messages and mails demanding them to withdraw from election.

Six opposition societies, including Al Wefaq National Islamic Society have decided to boycott election, while there is also a media campaign ‘0%’ launched recently through social media calling upon people in Bahrain to keep the voting boxes empty by not casting their votes.

Voting Blogs: Elections Canada and Social Media – How Tweet it Is | Edmonton Journal

If you still have any vague memories of this spring’s federal election campaign, you may be recall that Elections Canada attempted to enforce a ban on the “tweeting” and “Facebooking” of any regional election results before the polls had closed in British Columbia. It also banned mainstream media outlets from reporting such results on their commercial websites.

It was an antediluvian notion, which completely failed to grasp the way that social media and the Web have changed the way Canadians report upon and discuss the news. It was, in fact, a noxious attempt to censor political speech in the name of regional equity – as though western Canadians had a constitutional right or duty to be kept in ignorance of what was happening in the rest of their country.

It wasn’t wholly Elections Canada’s fault, of course. It was the Harper government which failed to amend the offending, and offensive legislation, despite the fact that Stephen Harper himself had railed against it back when he ran the National Citizens’ Coalition.

Poland: Parties prepare ‘virtual’ campaigns in Poland | thenews.pl

Poland’s political parties are being compelled to focus on the Internet for their forthcoming electoral campaigns, as several traditional methods of promotion have been banned under new laws.

Campaigns for the autumn’s ballot, whose date has been unofficially set by President Bronislaw Komorowski as taking place on 9 October, will formally commence in August, but this year parties are prohibited from using billboards and television commercials.

As a result, the Internet is emerging as a key battleground for the competing parties.

China: Activists harness Twitter to campaign in elections | Telegraph

Grassroots democracy activists in China are challenging the ruling Communist Party in unprecedented numbers by harnessing Twitter and other online social media tools to campaign in elections.

More than 100 “independent” candidates including farmers, factory workers, university professors, students, journalist and writers have announced their intention to stand for election, rattling senior Party officials.

China’s network of district assemblies have traditionally been stuffed with candidates “elected” from a carefully preselected list of mostly Communist Party members, although according to the law anyone can stand if they have the support of 10 local voters.