Socialist Party

Three weeks ago I found a message on my answering machine that the vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Party had died. Could I help get his obituary into the papers? ("And by the way, you wouldn't want to run for vice president, would you?") I'm a proud, though inactive, member of the Socialist Party and I agree with the platform. Still, I hesitated to become a candidate. Could I withstand the media scrutiny?

Vitor Constancio, leader of Portugal's opposition Socialist Party, resigned Thursday without explanation, a party spokesman said.

Chancellor Franz Vranitzky was elected Austrian Socialist Party chairman at a party conference, succeeding Fred Sinowatz. Vranitzky, 50, the only candidate nominated in Wednesday night's election, received 93.6% of the vote.

Albanians voting for a second consecutive Sunday sealed a landslide victory for the opposition Socialist Party in an election intended to end months of violence. Turnout was noticeably lower than in the previous weekend's first round, when voters overwhelmingly chose the Socialist Party in a resounding defeat for President Sali Berisha's Democratic Party. Officials said up to three constituencies will have to hold yet another round of voting next week.

The Hungarian Parliament dealt the ruling Socialist Party a setback by banning politics from the workplace. Lawmakers passed a bill allowing opposition parties to compete in national elections and rejected a motion by the new Socialist Party on political activities in shops and factories. Politicization of the workplace has been a key weapon of Communist indoctrination and is opposed by opposition groups.

The United Republican Party will undertake a campaign next month to challenge Guyana's ruling socialist party with a platform based on free enterprise and democracy, party leaders said. Chairman Vishnue Bandhu said that his party, founded in New York in 1985, will hold a series of public meetings starting Nov. 18 to explain its objectives.

Four prominent lieutenants of ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic resigned from his party Saturday, criticizing hard-liners as standing in the way of democratization, the Beta news agency reported.

The opposition Socialist Party elected a young politician who has been compared to Britain's Tony Blair as their new leader, four months after a stinging electoral defeat. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a congressman from the northern Leon region who has been with the party since he was 19, must now form a leadership group, which will face a vote of approval from the party congress today in Madrid, the capital.

The couple at the head of France's main opposition Socialist Party is breaking up. Segolene Royal had shown little delicacy in sweeping aside Francois Hollande -- Socialist Party boss and the father of her four children -- to bid for the French presidency herself. She also kept him and the Socialists at arm's length for much of her failed campaign. And on Sunday night, as the results of parliamentary elections rolled in, they announced that their romantic relationship was over.