statism watch

So Dwight Duncan’s argument to rationaliaze this scam is – ok, so what if we snuck this deal through under the radar of the Ontarian electorate (whom would have protested it had they known) – it’s a done deal now, and it would be besmirching our honour to go back on it. He’s completely begging the question of whether this this is even a severance. Ok, slick. You figure we’re stupid enough to buy that? Well, are we?

Flashback: HST ad campaign debuts in Ontario | Ont. deficit could linger for years: McGuinty | HST bill passes, 13% tax starts July 1 | Poll: HST equals Hated Sales Tax | Tories, Liberals, Bloc approve HST for Ontario and B.C. | Anti-HST protest at Ontario legislature spills onto Toronto streets | More HST debate fallout after Ontario Legislature sit-in | Liberals to support HST bill | Tory HST protest halts Ontario question period | Federal HST tax bill to be introduced, plays politics with law | Ontario Tories walk out to protest lack of hearings on HST | Contentious HST bill introduced in Ontario | Food under $4 to be HST-free, Ontario says | McGuinty says HST doubters exist in Liberal ranks | If passed, HST locked in through 2012 | New HST tax is fair, McGuinty says | Thousands rally against coming HST tax in BC | Flaherty offers taxpayer-funded bribe to adopt HST tax, holdout provinces demur | BC, like Ontario, moves to harmonize taxes | Ontario Liberals pressing to hide new ‘harmonized’ tax in prices | Ontario to merge GST, PST in ‘harmonized’ tax hike | EU approves free-trade talks with Canada | Canada expects EU free-trade talks soon: Stockwell Day | Harper, Sarkozy vow to work toward Canada-EU deal | CD Howe Institute backs Canada-EU deal, deep integration | Towards a new world order: Canada-EU trade proposal rivals scope of NAFTA

The Canadian Press
March 11, 2010

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan talks to reporters after tabling HST legislation on Nov. 16, 2009.

More than 1,250 Ontario tax collectors will get a severance package worth up to $45,000 each despite the fact they won’t be losing their jobs.

The move, part of the province’s plan to harmonize sales taxes with Ottawa, will see the provincial collectors become federal employees, triggering a payout critics said amounted to tens of thousands of dollars to change business cards.

The opposition parties said it shows how wrong-headed the HST is, but Premier Dalton McGuinty said the province is simply honouring an existing collective agreement.

“There’s an important part of our brand as a province, as a government, when we do business with each other and when we do business with the world, is that when we give you our word, our word is our word,” McGuinty said after an unrelated event in Listowel, Ont.

“I guess the alternative is we could introduce legislation in the house and say: ‘Look, you signed a deal and we signed a deal (but) it’s no longer convenient for us to respect that deal.’

“Where does that take you?”

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Revenue quietly announced the buyouts for more than 1,250 provincial collectors who will now work for Ottawa. It says the province had signed an agreement with the Canada Revenue Agency outlining “opportunities with the CRA for all Ontario government employees impacted by harmonization.”

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With McGuinty at the helm, Ontario is open for looting business!

Flashback: McGuinty eyes selling shares in LCBO, Hydro One | Ontario in no rush to sell Crown assets, minister says | Ontario Premiere McGuinty heralds Samsung ‘green energy’ deal | Ont. deficit could linger for years: McGuinty | Ontario eyes sale of crown corporations | HST bill passes, 13% tax starts July 1 | Poll: HST equals Hated Sales Tax | McGuinty dismisses calls for eHealth inquiry | Electronic health is the boondoggle of boondoggles | EHealth scandal a $1B waste: auditor | Ontario health minister quits over $1B scandal | McGuinty had hand in hiring disgraced eHealth CEO | More untendered eHealth spending, Liberal connections emerge | Head of eHealth Ontario is fired amid contracts scandal, gets big package | Personal ties exposed in eHealth’s untendered contracts | Ontario eHealth approved 4.8 million in no-bid contracts | Electronic immunization records needed: Toronto health official

The Canadian Press
March 10, 2010

Ontario’s New Democrats say some land developers who paid $5,000 each to attend a dinner with Premier Dalton McGuinty will make huge profits as a result of legislative changes made by the government.

Developers who are members of the East Moratorium Land Owners, a registered lobby group, met with McGuinty and several cabinet ministers at a private residence in May 2008.

The group had purchased nearly 1,000 acres in north Innisfil, just south of Barrie, for $25,000 to $66,000 an acre, but it was off limits to development.

Last December, the Liberal government passed legislation to transfer the land from Innisfil to Barrie, ending the freeze on development.

NDP critic Peter Kormos says the government’s bill immediately increased the value of the lands by about $30 million, even before they are developed.

“They fork over $5,000 a plate for dinner and within a year the government has made an extraordinary intervention that doubles and triples the value of their properties,” Kormos said in the legislature on Wednesday.

“Surely the premier can at least agree that his dinner companions have benefited from moves the government has made since their dinner meeting?”

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Flashback: Conservatives cracking down on criticism of Israel, NGOs warn | Watchdogs describe coming ‘under attack’ by Conservative government | Fury grows over Tory anti-Semitism charge levelled against Canadian churches | Federal website changes undermine Iraq resisters: critics | UK Anti-war MP banned from Canada | Kenney’s comments prejudice hearings for war resisters, critics say | Canada losing moral standing over treatment of Omar Khadr: Dallaire

CBC News
March 2, 2010

Opposition to government’s choice for president grows

Three senior managers at the federal government’s human rights agency who were suspended for publicly declaring their lack of confidence in three Conservative appointees to their organization’s board of directors earlier this year have been fired.

The news was confirmed by lawyer Julius Grey, who is representing the three, on Tuesday.

Rights & Democracy, created under Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government to encourage democracy and monitor human rights around the world, has been in turmoil since the Harper government appointed new board members last year.

The new members challenged grants being made to three human rights organizations known to be critical of Israel’s human rights record.

Federal opposition politicians and the family of former president Rémy Beauregard, who died in January, are calling for an independent inquiry into the organization.

Since Beauregard’s death, almost every staff member of Rights & Democracy has signed a letter stating non-confidence in the interim president and two board members.

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It’s time for a summation of the global warming fraud so far, and Christopher Booker delivers.

Flashback: UK: University at center of Climategate accused of misleading MPs, deleting information | Global warming panel to get independent review | Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 | Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

Christopher Booker, The Telegraph
February 27, 2010

The emerging errors of the IPCC’s 2007 report are not incidental but fundamental, says Christopher Booker

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC’s last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other “extreme weather events” were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The “science is settled”, the “consensus” is intact.

But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.

All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC’s 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.

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Flashback: Global warming panel to get independent review | Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 | Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

Ben Webster, The Times
February 27, 2010

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails has been accused of making a misleading statement to Parliament.

The University of East Anglia wrote this week to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee giving the impression that it had been exonerated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). However, the university failed to disclose that the ICO had expressed serious concerns that one of its professors had proposed deleting information to avoid complying with the Freedom of Information Act.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the university’s Climatic Research Unit, has stepped down while an inquiry takes place into allegations that he manipulated data to avoid scrutiny of his claims that manmade emissions were causing global warming. Professor Edward Acton, the university’s vice-chancellor, published a statement he sent to the committee before giving evidence to MPs at a public hearing on Monday. He said a letter from the ICO “indicated that no breach of the law has been established [and] that the evidence the ICO had in mind about whether there was a breach was no more than prima facie”.

But the ICO’s letter said: “The prima facie evidence from the published e-mails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence.”

The letter also confirmed the ICO’s previous statement that the university had failed in its duties under the Freedom of Information Act by rejecting requests for data. The university had demanded that the ICO withdraw this statement.

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Oh, another ‘Independent Review’ – like the last attempted whitewash? – courtesy of Rajenda Pauchari, who stands accused himself of massive conflicts of interest in the IPCC scheme. And the ‘few unsettling errors’, as the Associated Press puts it, continue to accumulate as the IPCC desperately tries to defuse the scandal.

Flashback: Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 | Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws | Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’ | Manufactured ‘Science’: Another IPCC Scientist Reveals How UN Scientists talked about ‘trying to make IPCC report so dramatic that US would just have to sign Kyoto Protocol’ | Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified | UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters | The IPCC glacier meltdown: More global warming fraud exposed | Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN IPCC climate chief | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 2 | Climategate: Al Gore lies | Climategate: A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism — Part 1 | If Climategate Is No Big Deal, Why Are Questions About It Met With An Armed Response? | Climategate: Investigations into climate fraud fixed | ‘Independent’ United Nations panel to examine Climategate evidence | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Climategate: Global Warming scientists placed under investigation | Latest Climategate revelation: Climate change data dumped | Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation | Obama’s ‘Science Czar’ John Holdren Friend of Climate Deception Lab | “Climategate”: Peer-Review System Was Hijacked By Warming Alarmists | Top Climatology Lab Hacked, E-Mails Reveal Biased Science | E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming | Polar bear expert barred from conference by global warming advocates | Top Japanese Scientists: Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity | IPCC caught with false figures, doubt cast on accuracy of global temperature record

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
February 27, 2010

Details for new process – the IPCC’s response to recent criticism of its reports – still to be worked out

In a statement issued on Feb. 27, 2020, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said the group of volunteer scientists tries to be accurate and follow procedures. ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images

The Nobel Prize-winning international scientific panel studying global warming is seeking independent outside review for how it makes major reports.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it’s seeking some kind of independent review because of recent criticism about its four 2007 reports.

Critics have found a few unsettling errors, including projections of retreats in Himalayan glaciers, in the thousands of pages of the reports.

Scientists say the problems are minor and have nothing to do with the major conclusions about man-made global warming and how it will harm people and ecosystems. But researchers acknowledge that they have been too slow to respond to a drip-drip-drip of criticisms in the past three months. And those criticisms seem to have resonated in poll results and media coverage that has put climate scientists on the defensive.

“The IPCC clearly has suffered a loss in public confidence,” Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, a chairman of one of the IPCC’s four main research groups told The Associated Press on Saturday. “And one of the things that I think the world deserves is a clear understanding of what aspects the IPCC does well and what aspects of the IPCC can be improved.”

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The Federal Reserve, probing Goldman Sachs? Some skepticism may be called for here.

Flashback: How EU Countries Cooked Books Using Derivatives | Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Obscure Debt Through Currency Swaps | America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels | How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash | Goldman Sachs breaks record with $16.7bn bonus pot | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Arrest Over Software Illuminates Wall St. Secret | The Lords of Time: Goldman Sachs and low-latency trading | Record quarterly profits and bonuses: Goldman Sachs makes out like a bandit on taxpayer’s dime | Goldman-Sachs: Pilfered trading code could be used to ‘manipulate markets’ | Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine | 10 U.S. banks to repay U.S. bailout money | Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda

Alan Rappeport, Tom Braithwaite, Financial Times
February 26, 2010

The US central bank is looking into Goldman Sachs’s role in arranging contentious derivatives trades for Greece, which helped the country to massage its public finances, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, revealed on Thursday.

“We are looking into a number of questions relating to Goldman Sachs and other companies and their derivatives arrangements with Greece,” Mr Bernanke said, apparently referring to Greek currency transactions structured by Goldman.

Testifying before Congress, Mr Bernanke also responded to concerns that instability in markets for Greek debt and other securities has been heightened by trading in other derivatives, known as credit default swaps, which compensate investors in case of default.

Mr Bernanke said default swaps are “properly used as hedging instruments” and that “using these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilises a company or a country is counterproductive”.

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Flashback: Afghanistan Drug Raid Snares Border Police Commander | Drug cop corruption case revived | Detective denies framing subordinate for drug theft, trial hears | Police officer stands trial for stealing fake cocaine in sting | Toronto police, corrections officers arrested in connection with grow-ops | Crown complained of lack of Toronto police support in drug squad case | CBC releases Toronto drug squad probe report

Owen Bowcott, The Guardian
February 24, 2010

Plan to smuggle more than 1,500kg of the drug into Ireland was foiled when the gang’s boat was shipwrecked

A former Metropolitan police detective is awaiting sentence after the trial of a cocaine-smuggling gang, part of whose £200m cargo was washed overboard in rough seas off the Irish coast.

Michael Daly, 49, was said to be pivotal to the conspiracy, organising the logistics, purchasing a rigid-hull inflatable boat and finding “safe houses” to be rented near a remote disused pier where the drugs were to be brought ashore in County Cork.

The gang tried to smuggle 62 bales – more than 1,500kg (3,300lb) – of the drug into the Irish Republic. The plan was foiled when their boat ran out of fuel in rough seas and was shipwrecked on 2 July 2007.

Daly, whose address was given as “of no fixed abode” but who had family links to the west Cork area, and Alan Wells, 56, earlier admitted their parts in the conspiracy. They are due to be sentenced at a later date.

The case can be reported for the first time today after a mechanic accused of arranging three Land Rovers for the gang was cleared of conspiracy to supply class A drugs by a jury at London’s Blackfriars crown court.

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Flashback: Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Obscure Debt Through Currency Swaps | America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels | How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash | Goldman Sachs breaks record with $16.7bn bonus pot | More US Bank Failures and The Coming Deposit Insurance Bailout | Arrest Over Software Illuminates Wall St. Secret | The Lords of Time: Goldman Sachs and low-latency trading | Record quarterly profits and bonuses: Goldman Sachs makes out like a bandit on taxpayer’s dime | Goldman-Sachs: Pilfered trading code could be used to ‘manipulate markets’ | Taibbi: NYSE ends transparency to protect Goldman Sachs | Goldman Sachs: The Great American Bubble Machine | 10 U.S. banks to repay U.S. bailout money | Top Senate Democrat: bankers “own” the U.S. Congress | Barclays, Lloyd’s, RBS join Goldman-Sachs in the black | Goldman-Sachs to repay TARP loan, resume private operations, bonuses, at “earliest time” possible | Which Banks Will Rule? | Wall Street’s Big Takeover | Behind the panic: Financial warfare over the future of global bank power | Goldman-Sachs Alumni Hold Reins of Financial System | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda

Joanna Slater, The Globe and Mail
February 22, 2010

Goldman Sachs defends moves that masked the size of loan, but investors wonder whether there are other problems hidden

A growing furor about financial stratagems that prettied up government balance sheets in Europe is rattling Wall Street and unnerving investors.

At the heart of the controversy are transactions arranged by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for Greece back in 2001, all entirely legal, that masked the full extent of its borrowing.

Hidden in plain sight, the deals were well known to a small group of traders but have burst onto the public stage as Greece struggles to stave off a full-blown debt crisis and counter skepticism about its bookkeeping.

Faced with mounting criticism, Goldman took the unusual step of posting a statement on its website late Sunday, where it described the deals, which involved derivatives known as swaps. The transactions were consistent with European principles at the time, Goldman said, and had a “minimal” effect on the country’s overall fiscal health.

A senior Goldman executive went further Monday in a hearing before a British parliamentary committee. While there was nothing inappropriate about the transactions, Goldman’s Gerald Corrigan said “the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher.”

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Is that anything like appointing Senators during prorogation? Whatever – there’s an interesting (and seemingly balanced) take on Karzai’s history with the Mujahideen, the ISI, and the Taliban here.

Flashback: Karzai set to replace most of his cabinet | Afghanistan announces latest ‘corruption crackdown’ | Karzai ‘wins’ as Afghan run-off cancelled | Occupiers involved in drug trade: Afghan minister | Afghan leader’s corrupt brother paid by CIA, U.S. officials say | Afghan probe voids thousands of Karzai votes | I was ordered to cover up President Karzai election fraud, sacked UN envoy says | EU observers say a third of Karzai’s votes might be suspect due to fraud | Afghanistan Drug Raid Snares Border Police Commander | Afghan vote called ‘mockery’ | Accusations over Afghan vote rigging | Afghan President Karzai registers for re-election, picks warlord as running mate | Canadian troops could soon target Afghan drug trade: top soldier | Reports reveal concerns over drug use among Canadian military | Afghan government sacks Kandahar governor | NATO to let troops fight Afghan drug lords | Karzai’s kin linked to heroin trafficking | Afghani Narco-state Continues to Blossom under Puppet President

Jon Boone, The Guardian
February 22, 2010

Guardian Exclusive: While parliament is in recess, president unilaterally decrees he can appoint entire panel, reigniting fears of fraud

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has unilaterally taken control of the country’s top electoral watchdog, provoking outrage from western diplomats, the Guardian has learnt.

The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which forced Karzai into a runoff election after it disqualified nearly 1m fraudulent votes in last year’s presidential election, previously included three foreign experts named by the UN.

However, according to a new presidential decree published today, Karzai will have the exclusive power to appoint all five panel members.

His decision to “Afghanise” the ECC came while parliament was in recess.

It provoked a shocked reaction from western diplomats, who fear parliamentary elections – due to take place in six months – will be fatally undermined by a repeat of last year’s electoral fraud.

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