The ruling party's politburo jostled for positions, sharp elbows being deployed before the congress, which turned out, in the words of one disgruntled Zanu-PF member, to have been nothing but a "praise and worship show" for the ageing leader.
Even enthusiasts of the Japan Socialist Party and its leader, Takako Doi, say that in recent months the party has moved to the mainstream so quickly that it is hard to distinguish its positions from the ruling party's.
In 1997, he became ANC secretary-general and served two terms in this position and 10 years later he was elected as the ruling party's deputy president.
China's position is that the world's second-largest economy is open to United States tech companies, but only on the ruling party's terms.
In Armenia, the ruling party's vote share, as a proportion of all registered voters, increases with 2.5 percentage points in polling stations where the chairperson was randomly assigned to the ruling party.
That backlash eroded the ruling party's approval ratings.
In particular, the luring of opposition party elite into ruling party government positions, made public and broadcast widely, saw many leading opposition party members jump to the ruling party for well paid undersecretary of state or advisor positions in the last two months prior to the elections.
During the meeting, Yoshimasa Hayashi, a member of Japanese Parliament from the ruling party, crystallized the Japanese position in an interview with the BBC.
Mr. Nakano said he thought the ruling party was trying to position itself to avoid the fallout from more big bankruptcies, not to stop them from happening.
If opposition politicians had long surmised that Mexico's ruling party was using its dominant position to channel tax-payer money illegally to its party operations, no evidence was ever assembled to prove those suspicions.
