EGYPT

EGYPT
Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, Sept. 7: Today, the people will have their say in the first-ever multi-candidate presidential elections. The candidates' electoral campaigns have been the focus of attention for more than a month now, but yesterday the press was urging the people to go to the ballots. However, the absence of independent monitoring of the polling stations raised controversy.
Turning point
In Al-Akhbar, Ilham Abul Fath said she failed to understand why the Presidential Election Commission had refused non-governmental monitoring of the elections. "Because we are going through a great democratic experience we have to open the door for all those wishing to monitor our experience," she argued, commenting that the commission should have stated its reasons for the refusal and that we don't want to give the impression that we're trying to hide something. In the same paper, Fatma Mustafa described the elections as a turning point for Egyptian and Arab politics.
Mohamed Abdel-Moneim, also of Al-Akhbar, wrote that the amendment to Article 76 of the Constitution is like "a kiss of life," reinvigorating the souls of the people.
BRITAIN
Daily Telegraph, London, Sept. 6: The tempo in the German general election has quickened following the televised debate between the chancellor, Gerhard SchrJoder, and his conservative challenger, Angela Merkel. He remains personally more popular than she, but he failed to deliver a killer blow during Sunday night's exchanges, and his party still trails hers by about 11 percentage points in the opinion polls. Nevertheless, the precise outcome of the ballot on Sept. 18 is no foregone conclusion.
About a third of the electorate remains undecided. The fortunes of three of the smaller groups, the Free Democrats (FDP), the Greens and the newly formed Left Party, each of which might form a coalition with the big two, are hovering between six and eight per cent of the vote. Mr SchrJoder may be finished, but his Social Democrats under another leader could join a grand coalition with Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) or even team up with the Greens and the Left alliance.
Persistent unemployment
Both of these results would be unsatisfactory, the first promising consensus-induced stagnation, the second threatening a reversal of even the limited economic reforms introduced under Mr. SchrJoder. During their seven years in power, the Social Democrats have twice failed to meet their campaign pledge of reducing unemployment. For that, they and their coalition partner, the Greens, deserve to be voted out, opening the way to a Christian Democrat/Free Democrat partnership with a keener appetite for liberalisation.
Mrs. Merkel may not meet the wishes of her economic adviser, Paul Kirchhof, to sweep away a thicket of fiscal regulations with a flat rate income tax of 25 per cent; opposition to that radical step within the CDU's sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, is strong.
But she does intend to simplify the tax laws, reduce subsidies and lower non-wage labour costs. Germany's manufacturers have performed heroically.