Middle East, Elections | featured news

A Pakistani court disqualified the country’s one-time military leader and president Pervez Musharraf from taking part in coming national elections on Tuesday, dashing his hopes of rejoining Pakistani politics.

President Bashar al-Assad is likely to run for re-election next year and win, with Syria remaining in military and political deadlock until then, said the deputy leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group.

Afghanistan will hold its next presidential election on April 5, 2014, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, had denied speculation that security problems and the exit of foreign troops that year would delay the poll.

Having created one surprise in pushing for an early general election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now delivered an even greater bomb-shell. The plan for early elections has been abandoned. Instead a new broadly-based governing coalition has been called into existence with the opposition centre-right Kadima party of Shaul Mofaz joining the government.

Syrians voted in a parliamentary election on Monday touted by authorities as a milestone of political reform but dismissed by the opposition as a facade while people are killed every day in an anti-government uprising.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday said he was considering bringing forward by a year the presidential election set for 2014 to reduce the pressure on the conflict-plagued country during the period when majority of NATO coalition troops are scheduled to withdraw.

Iranians head to the polls Friday in a parliamentary election marking the first nationwide balloting since a disputed vote triggered massive protests nearly three years ago.

Saudi Arabia will allow women to stand for election and vote, the king announced on Sunday, in a significant policy shift in the conservative Islamic kingdom.

Results for Ghazni province are withheld because a fair tally is considered impossible. Protests break out over the disqualification of some candidates. Afghanistan's main electoral body on Wednesday released what were billed as the final results of September's trouble-plagued parliamentary election.

Ballots from 10% of the nation's voting centers have been nullified as widespread complaints of vote irregularities are investigated.