Quebec Premier Jean Charest`s federalist Liberals are closing in on a majority midway through an election campaign in Canada`s mostly French-speaking province, according to a survey Wednesday.

A poll conducted by Leger Marketing for the daily Globe and Mail and the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir put the Liberals ahead of the separatist Parti Quebecois by 11 points.

GENEVA, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Riots and charges of racism have clouded the normally peaceful Swiss political scene less than two weeks before federal elections, in an increasingly bitter and personalised campaign.

The far-right populist Swiss People's Party (SVP) is leading the polls, and its aggressive campaigning and provocative rhetoric have sparked consternation amongst rival parties used to the genteel traditions of political consensus.

WARSAW, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - Poland's president postponed on Thursday memorial events marking the Soviet massacre of soldiers in 1940 after concerns that politicians could exploit them in the country's election campaign.

Events in honour of 22,500 Polish prisoners of war slain by the Soviet secret police in the notorious Katyn forest and other sites had been set to begin on Friday, less than three weeks before parliamentary elections on October 21.

WARSAW, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - Acclaimed Polish film director Andrezj Wajda Thursday urged the country's ruling conservatives to stop exploiting the Soviet slaying of thousands of Polish PoWs in 1940 to gain ground in Poland's bitter election campaign.

Wajda, whose newly released film 'Katyn' is named after the forest where many of the 22,500 captured Polish army officers were massacred in 1940, asked President Lech Kaczynski to postpone three days of memorial ceremonies for the victims which are due to begin Friday.

ROME, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - Italy's hard-fought parliamentary elections in April last year were 'totally legal' for the Senate, a bipartisan investigative committee said Tuesday after a marathon recount begun in December.

But the jury is still out on the cliffhanger lower house elections, also the subject of a probe.

Outgoing centre-right prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose coalition narrowly lost the tightest elections in Italian history, challenged the result while himself coming under suspicion for fraud.

HARARE, Sept 6, 2007 (AFP) - Zimbabwe's ruling party seeks to make more changes to a Constitutional Bill that is already before parliament, the party said in a statement released on Thursday.

President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) said the politburo held a meeting on Wednesday in the capital Harare to hear a report from Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa on the proposed amendments to the bill.

KIEV, Aug 24, 2007 (AFP) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Friday he hoped forthcoming parliamentary elections would end the political crisis that has beset the country since the last vote in March 2006.

The September 30 elections in this ex-Soviet republic 'give Ukraine a chance,' he told a crowd of about three thousand people during independence day celebrations on Kiev's Sofia Square.

'The political uncertainty must pass into history,' said the pro-Western president.

WARSAW, Aug 16, 2007 (AFP) - Poland's liberal opposition party could edge out the ruling conservatives to take sole power in next month's snap elections, according to two separate opinion polls published Thursday.

Surveys by the TNS OBOP and GfK Polonia polling institutes found Civic Platform would win 33 percent of the vote while the party of Poland's ruling Kaczynski twins, Law and Justice (PiS), would win 24 percent.

KIEV, Aug 11, 2007 (AFP) - Ukraine's electoral commission has refused to register candidates from opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc ahead of upcoming legislative elections, she said Saturday.

Nearly 500 Tymoshenko supporters rallied in front of the commission's office in response, and the opposition leader pledged to file a court complaint over the issue.

The commission refused to register Tymoshenko's pro-Western bloc for the September 30 legislative elections on grounds that the group's list lacked information on where the candidates lived.

WARSAW, Aug 11, 2007 (AFP) - Poland's conservative Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Saturday he planned early elections in October or November following a crisis within his coalition government.

'It could be October 21, or perhaps a week earlier or later, it doesn't matter, but it will be in November at the latest,' he told journalists after a meeting of the leadership of his Law and Justice (PiS) party.

ALMATY, Aug 10, 2007 (AFP) - A leading Kazakh opposition figure on Friday accused the country's information minister of censoring a television debate in which the two participated ahead of August 18 parliamentary elections.

'They cut a lot out, about five minutes,' said Bulat Abilov, a member of the opposition Social Democratic Party.

'Among the passages they censored was one where I spoke about corruption in KazMunaiGaz and another about freedom of expression,' he said, referring to the state-owned oil and gas giant.

MOSCOW, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - A top European human rights body on Tuesday urged Russia to provide opposition parties equal access to the media during upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will closely monitor access to the media given to Russia's opposition during the polls, Rene van der Linden, head of the assembly, told journalists at a briefing in Moscow.

VIENNA, July 27, 2007 (AFP) - The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said Friday it had appointed a special co-ordinator to oversee parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan next month.

Consiglio Di Nino, who is head of the Canadian delegation to the OSCE assembly, will lead a team of observers to Kazakhstan 'to observe polling in several regions of the country, including in both Astana and Almaty' during the August 18 vote, the Vienna-based organisation said in a statement.

OTTAWA, July 25, 2007 (AFP) - Moscow's decision to freeze a key Soviet-era Russia-NATO arms pact must not sway upcoming elections in neighboring Ukraine, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay urged Wednesday.

'The withdrawal or suspension of the treaty has had a very chilling effect, particularly on the surrounding countries and those of the former Soviet Bloc,' MacKay said.

ATHENS, July 23, 2007 (AFP) - Greek newspapers on Monday called the stunning electoral win by Turkey's governing party a slap to that country's secular military that will change relations between the regional rivals.

The elections saw Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party increase its share of the popular vote by more than 12 points from 2002 to 46.4 percent -- the largest for any single party since 1969.

'The new Turkish political scene hides traps that demand we adapt our policies,' left-leaning Ta Nea wrote in an editorial.