LETTER N° 42

From 15 to 21 of October

15 Albania		Local elections - second round. The governing Socialists are assured of an easy victory in most of the 144 municipalities and communes
15 Russian Federation (Udmurtiya Republic)		Presidential election. Results : none available.
15 Portugal (Azores and Madeira)		Parliamentary regional elections. Results in the Azores : victory of Carlos Cesar's PS (Socialist Party) winning absolute majority and 30 deputies in this regional assembly. Parliamentary regional elections. Results in Madeira : victory of incumbent president of the regional assembly Alberto João Jardim (PSD) with 55,91% of the votes and 41 deputies.
15 India (Goa)		Municipal elections.An estimated 70 to 75 per cent of voters out of the two lakh electorate cast their votes for the elections to 11 municipal councils in Goa. Results : the electorate has rejected all the past chairpersons seeking renomination on the council. Among those that suffered defeat were Subhash Narvekar (Mapuca), Ghanasham Shirodkar (Margao), Anita Govekar (Bicholim), Anant Jeli (Valpai), Vikas Desai (Pernew), Maria D'Costa (Curchorem) and Manuel D'Costa (Sanguem).
15 Slovenia		Parliamentary elections. Results : the center-left party of Slovenia's former prime minister Janez Drnovsek won weekend parliamentary elections with 36.04 percent of the vote. Drnovsek's Liberal Democrats (LDS)would thus have 34 seats in the 90-seat parliament, far surpassing the Social Democratic Party (SDS) of Prime Minister Andrej Bajuk's center-right coalition, which won 15.87 percent of Sunday's vote, giving it 14 seats.
15 Mexico (Tabasco)		Gubernatorial election. Results : all indications are that Manuel Andrade of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will gain a narrow victory. With 90 percent of the vote counted, Manuel Andrade of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and Raul Ojeda of the opposition Democratic Revolution Party were tied with 44 percent. Jose Antonio de la Vega of the National Action Party was in third place with 8 percent.
15 Belarus		Parliamentary elections. Results : The head of Belarus's Central Election Commission, Lidia Yermoshina, said the 50 percent barrier had been cleared in only 82 of 110 seats for the lower house of parliament.Yermoshina said most of the 82 constituencies declared valid had failed to produce winners with a clear majority and would require a run-off in two weeks. Only a 25 percent turnout is needed in the second round. In districts where votes are declared invalid because of low turnout, new elections are to be held within three months.
15 Japan (Nagano)		Gubernatorial election. Results : Yasuo Tanaka, 44, defeated former vice-governor Fumitaka Ikeda with a vote of 589,324 to 473,717.
15 Switzerland		The Swiss Socialist Party's Congress met in Lugano and elected unanimously Christiane Brunner at the head of the PSS. On the other hand, national councilor Christine Goll from Zurich, and national councilor Hans-Jürg Fehr, from Schaffhousen were elected to the vice-presidency.
15 Austria		Voters in the province of Styria went to the polls to elect a new regional government. Results : Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party won only 12.4 percent of the vote. People's Party Gov. Waltraud Klasnic narrowly missed an absolute majority, her party finished with about 47 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats finished with about 32 percent overall. The Greens added a total of 5.6 percent.
16 United States		Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan dies in a plane crash.
16 Canada (Newfoudland)		Newfoundland Premier Brian Tobin resigns.       Deputy Premier Beaton Tulk becomes premier.
16 Nicaragua		Francisco Xavier Aguirre Sacasa becomes foreign minister.
17 Zambia		Parliamentary byelection in Sikongo. Results : the United Party for National Development (UPND) won. UPND candidate Best Makumba polled 2,555 against MMD's David Nyundu Nyundu's 2,122 votes. 370 votes were rejected. Turn out : of the 16, 500 registered voters only 5,047 cast their votes.
17 United States		Lieutenant Governor Roger Wilson becomes acting governor to Missouri.
17 Yugoslavia		Zoran Novakovic is the new acting foreign minister.
17 Canada		John Manley, entrusted since 1993 with the ministry of Industry, has been appointed as minister of Foreign Affairs, following a ministerial shuffle.
18 Egypt		Parliamentary elections - stage one of the three scheduled. Results : 29 candidates, 20 from President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party, had clearly won. The remaining 121 seats will have to be decided in another round of voting Tuesday.
18 Sri Lanka		Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga keeps defence, and finance jobs in new cabinet and inducted Richard Pathirana 43, to Home Affairs finalising a shaky coalition government. in which she retains the key defence and finance portfolios. Kumaratunga also accommodated members of two minority Tamil and Muslim parties which are providing her with crucial support to remain in power.
18 Belgium (Brussels)		François-Xavier de Donnéa becomes minister-president of the Brussels region.
18 France		Ministerial reshuffle. Mrs Elisabeth Guigou is appointed Minister of' Employment and Solidarity thus replacing Mrs Martine Aubri. Mrs Guigou was born on Aug.6, 1946 in Marrakech (Morroco). She has a B.A -literature-; M.A in American literature d'études supérieures en littérature américaine ; M.S in Economical Sciences ; Former student from the "Ecole Nationale d'Administration".     Mrs Marylise Lebranchu is appointed as Minister of Justice thus replacing Mrs Elisabeth Guigou. Mrs Lebranchu was born on April 25, 1947 in Loudéac, Côtes-d'Armor- Britanny- France. B.s in territorial development.
18 Bosnia and Hercegovina		Martin Raguz replaces Spasoje Tusevljak as prime minister.
19 Canada (Yukon)		Municipal elections. Results : avalaible soon.
19 Costa Rica		Mario Fernández Ortiz is the new minister of public Works and Transportation sworn in by the President of the Republic, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez.
19 East Timor		José Ramos-Horta is sworn is as foreign minister.
19/20 South Korea		EU, Asian Leaders Gather for 3d Summit. 25 European and Asian nations hosted by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, whose efforts to reach out to the North earned the Nobel Peace Prize last week and warm praise from fellow leaders.
21 Canada (Nova Scotia)		Municipal elections. For the first time, each of the the province's eight regional school boards will have an additional seat designated for a black member. Results avalaible soon.
21 U.K (Scotland)		The Scottish Labour Party has announced plans to elect an interim leader. Elections will take place in Stirling.
21 Yugoslavia (Serbia)		The prime minister of Serbia, Mirko Marjanovic, resigns.
21/22 Egypt (Caire)		Arab Summit. 21 Arab ministers of Foreign Affairs - out of 22, Lybia kept from attending the Cairo meeting - busily prepared the "extraordinary summit" of Arab State leaders. Arab leaders cooled demands for an immediate rupture of ties with Israel by arguing that Arabs could wait until their next summit, scheduled for March, to reassess the situation.In apparent deference to Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab states to sign peace treaties with Israel, the communique leaves it up to individual countries to decide on existing ties. Libya, represented only by its Arab League ambassador, quit the meeting because Arab leaders failed to cut ties with Israel. Sunday's statement is likely to call for a U.N. war crimes tribunal to try Israelis responsible for``massacres,'' as well as a cash fund to aid the Palestinians.