"We're sending a very bad message to our partners around the world — all in the name of election-year politics.
"As to the deceiving drama under the name of elections 2014, our pious people will not tire themselves out, nor will they participate in it," Mr. Omar said in a statement e-mailed to journalists last March.
Those who can find a chair sit around tables stacked high with papers listing the names of election candidates Chrysi Avgi will field.
They are models for characters in movies that go beyond the usual Hollywood glorification of political consultants, offering dark and at times unsettling accounts of what is done in the name of winning elections.
Opponents like Canavan argue Hanson is simply "a PR vehicle" and the risk of "[beating] her up" is enhancing her name recognition and prospects of election.
Kasparov has chosen to join forces with the leftists — even leftists like Limonov, who, in the past, has made common cause with neo-Fascists and anti-Semites — in the name of creating genuine elections and democratic procedures.
The Arab revolutions followed, placing Islamists in power in the name of democracy and elections, without a clear pledge to uphold the democracy of equality and the separation of religion and state, or the democracy of not monopolizing all positions of power.
But many conservatives who held their tongues in the name of Mr. Bush's election may insist he does indeed owe them and will not stay quiet.
The nation's Republican governors contended today that the Gore campaign was "brutally abusing" the good name of Florida's top election official and seriously threatening the foundations of American democracy by continuing to challenge the results of the state's presidential balloting.
The Senate is the real name of the game this election.
