"For years, the regime has hampered opposition parties... Today, everybody is revolting.
Opposition representatives expressed bitterness at the change, saying they fear that the government might use the extension to postpone new elections, set election rules that would hamper the opposition or pardon the military and security forces for human rights violations.
While the Assad regime claims the lapses were the result of a faulty network link, the evidence suggests that they were deliberate efforts by the government to hamper the opposition's ability to communicate inside the country and with the outside world.
Network Rail said its efforts to improve contact between signallers and train drivers had been hampered by opposition to the construction of radio masts by railway lines.
But what's really tragic is that Pakistan happens to be at the epicenter of a crucial ongoing vaccination programme: the worldwide campaign to eliminate polio, which has been hampered by opposition from Muslim clerics.
The rise of open access has been hampered by opposition from some publishers, who see it as a threat to a lucrative subscription model, and by some quarters of the research community fearful of jettisoning an established process of publishing in familiar journals.
Initial attempts to seek powers to make the River Don navigable were hampered by opposition from local landowners and disunity between the authorities in Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster.
He received numerous death threats, and the rest of his administration was hampered by ferocious opposition.
For most of 2008 it was hampered by Serbian opposition and by splits within the EU.
Tepco has pushed to reopen at least one of those plants but has so far been hampered by local opposition.
