Tuesday 17 December 2013

Mali elections - keep up to date


Elections took place in Mali recently.

The UN reported on turnout.

APO African Press organisation has some reports of results.

IFES has data which compares with other lections plus background information on the electoral system.

for information on the conduct of the elections and the state of democracy see NDI which also has good links to other news reports.

The EU official election observation mission

ECOWAS

African Union resources on Mali

EISA South Africa assessment of recent elections and links to results.

see also some earlier recomendations from this blog

Friday 6 December 2013

Croatia - same sex marriage poll - does it display the rotten heart of a nation?



This week Croatians took part in a national referendum to debate whether same sex marriage should be banned under the constitution.

the Guardian comment is free described the results as exposing the rotten heart of Europe

See the question and results on the IFES website which also has other electoral materials from the region

The official website of the electoral authority has a full map of the results and a breakdown.

Here are some more resources. Materials are mostly in Croatian so apologies if they are not exact as I have had to rely on others.
Croatian Bishops Conference supported the referendum
Most media did not

Jutarnji list, one of the country's largest newspapers, announced it would openly endorse the campaign against the amendment.

Tabloid newspaper coverage printed a swastika.to summarise their thoughts.

On the day of the referendum the initiative decided to forbid access to their headquarters to the journalists belonging to a group of selected media whom the initative accused of bias, unprofessionalism and plagiarism. Among these were the Croatian Radiotelevision, the public broadcasting company, the most visited Croatian Internet portals Index.hr, Net.hr and T-portal, as well as all of the publications by Europapress Holding and Novi list. the Croatian Journalists' Association invited all of the media to boycott the coverage of initiative on the referendum day, .