"We're talking about a very positive response by the public in terms of determination to register and vote but, you know, this has been one of the most vicious, unprincipled, vulgar and violent election exercises I have ever witnessed," Soyinka reflected sadly.
In 1935 he called elections exercises in "collective decadence," and early in 1936 he told his followers that "even the idea of soliciting a vote nauseates me".
From about 1600, certain Catholic monarchs claimed a jus exclusivae (right of exclusion), i.e. a veto over papal elections, exercised through a crown-cardinal.
Using these figures and the results of the 2010 general election, the exercise modelled the effects of a uniform swing from the old boundaries to new.
"We expect whoever wins the NT election to exercise a high degree of transparency where extraordinary arrangements are to be put in place for particular exploration projects, particularly for fossil-fuel projects with major environmental impacts".
As Adam Gabbatt reports, today's round concerns the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, an election year exercise in hysterical gay-bashing that Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996 to help secure the reelection that he never came close to losing.
But the outcome also provided a kind of election-year exercise that put on full display the financial, economic and organizational forces that are already shaping the presidential contest between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mr. Vedrine, along with President Clinton -- who called Mr. Kostunica today -- and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, were convicted in absentia of war crimes in a pre-election propaganda exercise here.
To the extent that the governed can and do participate in public debate and elections they exercise those very deliberative capacities that it is the aim of government to develop.
