With one day to go until Hong Kong's lawmakers meet to debate and vote on the highly contentious Beijing-backed electoral reform package, leaders are on high alert for more popular uprisings.
He even pushed all parties into an electoral-reform package last year, albeit his own party, the PRI, watered it down at the last minute.
The Isle of Wight constituency (Britain's biggest) currently boasts 110,000 electors.Desperate to pass a wider package of electoral changes by a self-imposed deadline of February 17th, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition blinked, adding the Isle of Wight to a list of only two other exceptions, both of them sparsely populated Scottish seats.
The result would have been to hand the G.O.P. nominee an unearned Ohio-size package of electoral votes, along with, quite possibly, the presidency.
If the Legislature does not pass a package of electoral reforms, including public financing, before the session ends in June, he says he will consider appointing a Moreland Act Commission that can investigate and subpoena government officials suspected of misconduct.
The parliament passed a package that includes electoral-law reforms to cut fraud and the replacement of the election commission, as requested by Mr Yushchenko; and changes that strip the president of some powers (such as the right to appoint certain ministers) while increasing those of the prime minister and the parliament, as proposed by Mr Kuchma.
Strikingly, Renzi said his government would push through a package of constitutional and electoral reform that, among other things, would dramatically overhaul the senate.
While Florida's State Legislature is to be commended for improving the state's electoral system (editorial, May 5), the reform package is not without problems.
