Political Parties

Cutting a gaping hole in federal election laws, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the nation's political parties a free-speech right to spend vast amounts of money to promote their views and their candidates. The 7-2 decision strikes down a limit on party spending that was enacted 22 years ago after the Watergate scandal. Too much money flowing into politics causes corruption, Congress said then.

Etiquette arbiter Letitia Baldridge is quite clear in her book "The New Manners for the '90s" about what to to avoid at social affairs: "Politics is a subject about which people begin to feel personally antagonistic." In other words, a real party-killer. But don't tell that to Janice Johnson of Laguna Beach or any of several other social types who are flocking to Orange County's wave of "political parties." For them, the best kinds of bashes are those that promote antagonism.

The speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament has created a political party, three months after the Communists expelled him. Gennady N. Seleznyov said the Party of Russia's Revival stands for "the creation of a social state ... military capability and security of the country, strengthening the external political role of Russia as one of the great powers," the Itar-Tass news agency reported. About 600 delegates attended the party's founding meeting, including former Soviet leader Mikhail S.

Younis Qanooni, who quit as education minister to run in Afghanistan's presidential race and came in second to Hamid Karzai, said he is forming an opposition political party. Before Karzai named his Cabinet last week, there had been speculation that he would give control of the Defense Ministry to Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik who was a senior figure in the Northern Alliance, which helped the United States drive the Taliban from power in 2001.

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu's longtime ally Avigdor Lieberman launched a new party, aiming to rally the support of Russian-speaking Israelis around the prime minister ahead of May elections. But political analysts differed on whether his Yisrael Baitainu party--Hebrew for "Israel Is Our Home"--would help or hurt Netanyahu.

Haitian political parties meeting at the United Nations signed a pact that restructures Parliament and paves the way to bring exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back. The agreement completes the first stage of a 10-step pact signed between Aristide and Haitian military commander Raoul Cedras on July 3 that calls for the return of the exiled president.

A bill that would slash the number of political parties and increase their dependence on the government was approved by the lower house of parliament. Critics say the bill is designed to give President Vladimir V. Putin control over the nation's politics. It would also make parties largely dependent on government financing. But Putin says the new rules would lead to the creation of a few, strong parties, replacing the current cacophony of the more than 200.

A new law going to Parliament next month will give Hungarians the right to form political parties and trade unions, Justice Minister Kalman Kulcsar said Thursday. "The bill on the right of association sets down that private persons and legal entities may set up political parties, trade unions, interest representations and other social organizations," the Hungarian news agency MTI quoted Kulcsar as saying after a meeting of Hungary's Cabinet.

The ruling Communist Party in Albania decided to allow the formation of political parties, the state news agency ATA said. The surprise decision to liberalize politics in the Balkan nation was made during a meeting of the party's policy-setting Central Committee. Albania would be the last country in Europe to introduce a multi-party system. The Central Committee meeting was held following student unrest that started over the weekend.

The Mexican government and eight political parties signed an agreement Thursday calling for sweeping and unprecedented electoral reforms in an attempt to end a peasant uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. The agreement took a giant step toward meeting one of the central demands of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which launched a New Year's Day insurgency calling for indigenous rights and political empowerment through clean and just elections.