Election news round-up - Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Thailand and the UK

8.02.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 31st Mar 2006

There have been, or are about to be, some interesting elections happening overseas and of course nominations have opened in the UK's Local Elections. I thought I would give a quick (p)review of events in Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Thailand and the UK.

Belarus has recently had a Presidential election - most people however are not suggesting it was free or fair in any way. Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected with 83%. Since the election there are been demonstrations about the election and Lukashenko has not been seen in public since March 20 (the day after the election). The inauguration was supposed to have taken place today but has been mysteriously postponed. Worse still it is difficult to get news from Belarus so we have no clear idea of what is happening there.

Colin Ross, Sue Simmonds and Dave Radcliffe in Ukraine at the time of the Orange Revolution

Ukraine has had Parliamentary elections, in the elections the President (Viktor Yushchenko) bloc fared badly, coming third behind two rivals. The largest Party is that of the ex-President Viktor Yanukovich, in second place was the bloc of the former Prime Minster (sacked by Yushcenko) Yulia Timoshenko. December 2004 saw the so called 'Orange Revolution', which I fortunate to see first hand, and many have commented that is the the unravelling of that - I would disagree as then Yushchenko and Timoshenko were working together and between they they still recorded a majority of the votes. I am unsure as to what will happen next but Timoshenko has ruled out working with Yanukovich's party which means Yushchenko will have to decided between two bitter and personal rivals now.

The flag of Balarus

Israel had Parliamentary elections earlier in the week, I was waiting to comment to see the final results. The results have certainly been interesting and the traditional party politics that has dominated Israel has been thrown out of the window. Kadima, the new Party set up by Sharron by now run by Ehud Olmert won 28 seats, Labour were second with 20 seats and Likud (the former main party!) came fifth with just 11 seats. The Knesset has 120 seats and the rest are divided by religious parties (the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism, have 19 seats between them), Arab parties (10 seats) and bizarrely the Pensioners Party (7 seats), a small left-wing party - Meretz (4 seats) and a large far-right grouping Yisrael Beiteinu (cannot find the number of seats they have). It looks like Olmert will have his work cut out trying to put a coalition together, it is virtually certainly that Kadima and Labour will join forces and this shoudl lead to further withdrawals as they both campaigned on that platform.

The flag of Thailand

Thailand's elections are this coming Sunday the opposition is boycotting the elections which could mean that the elections could be declared unconstitutional. The Peoples Alliance for Democracy has already asked the Election Commission to disqualify the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from the election. This all comes amid demonstrations that call for the Prime Minister to resign. Certainly one to watch!

In the United Kingdom, nominations have opened for the Local Government elections, the elections take place on Thursday 4th May. There are elections in 188 (I think from memory) Councils in England, including 'all-ups' in London, and 'by-thirds' in the metropolitan West Midlands (and other metropolitan councils) and a bit of a mish-mash in the District and Unitary Councils.

Colin Ross - Liberal Democrat Candidate for Tettenhall Regis

My nomination has been submitted for Tettenhall Regis ward in Wolverhampton, I have to wait until Monday (when nominations close) to see who I am up against. I would certainly expect the sitting Conservative Councillor and the previous Labour candidate to re-stand I am not sure who else we may have last time there was also a UKIP candidate in the ward.