With the Cabinet’s approval of a legislative package that will govern the long-delayed parliamentary elections, ongoing debate as to the arguable constitutionality of these bills has some questioning if there is real political will to seat a new parliament.

La mayoría de los colegios electorales sudaneses, exceptuando los ubicados en dos estados del centro y oeste del país, cerraron sus puertas hoy en el cuarto y último día de los comicios generales para dar comienzo mañana al recuento de votos. 

Las elecciones presidenciales y parlamentarias comenzaron el pasado lunes en todo el país, y estaba previsto que se celebrasen en tres días, aunque se prolongaron finalmente una jornada más en todo el país. 

Various sources in Sudan reported the detention of a number of anti-election campaigners during the past few days. 

According to the Darfur Bar Association, human rights lawyer Musa Zakariya Juju and his client were detained in Khartoum on Sunday. Lawyer Ali Saeed Kuku was held at his office in El Sawra district in Omdurman. University teaching assistant Khaled Khalil Musa, and teacher Khamees Hamdan were taken from their homes in El Sawra.

Security officers detained 20 people, most of them women, in South Darfur's Gireida on Tuesday, when they refused to leave the Zakat Chamber and cast their votes instead. Security forces in North Darfur’s Kutum knocked on house doors, ordering the residents to vote.

A relative of one of the detainees told Radio Dabanga that a force of security agents, led by the head of security of Gireida locality, told a group of poor women and men applying for financial support at the Zakat (Islamic alms) Chamber, to move to the polling centres and vote for President Al Bashir.  

Tehran — a metropolis with 7.8 million inhabitants, 22 districts and 354 neighborhoods — conducted its fourth set of neighborhood council elections in March. More than 13,000 candidates ran for office, and according to high-ranking municipality officials, the number is a significant increase compared with 2009 elections. Still, although voter turnout was significant, there are doubts about the effectiveness of the councils in the framework of urban policymaking.

The head of Egypt’s the liberal Wafd Party has criticised the prime minister’s meetings with political parties on the country's electoral laws, describing them as “useless.”

 Ibrahim Mahlab has held a series of meetings this month with political parties and public figures to discuss amendments to Egypt's electoral laws, paving the way for Egypt’s long-delayed parliamentary elections.

The leader of the Democratic Party in Albania, Lulzim Basha accused today the two governing allies of running people with criminal records for the June 21 local government elections.

During the meeting of the democrat parliamentary group, Basha said that decriminalization is a decisive moment. Basha said that PM Edi Rama is not able to separate himself from people with criminal records and not defend them when they appear in front of the prosecution and police.