Word: popular
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...What a difference four years makes. In 2004, Abdullah's party won a record mandate, capturing 64% of the popular vote and 91% of seats in parliament. The overwhelming victory was due, in part, to the attraction of a fresh face-after 22 years in power, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad handed over the reigns to Abdullah in 2003. Abdullah also scored points by positioning himself as a progressive reformer; he promised to clean up widespread graft and strengthen civil liberties...
...Madrid. Although the official count wouldn't be released for several hours, the crowd was confident that their man had won the national elections - decisively. And indeed by 11:30pm, with roughly 90% of the ballots counted, the Socialists had won 43.87% of the vote, while the opposition Popular Party held...
...opposition Popular Party has repeatedly attacked the governing Socialists for not doing enough to eradicate ETA. The conservative party initially lent its support to the 2006 peace process, but soon began criticizing the government's strategies. And after ETA broke the truce by blowing up a parking garage at Madrid's Barajas airport in December of 2006, killing two, the PP has sharply criticized Zapatero for continuing to "negotiate with terrorists" and lying about it to the Spanish people...
...after today's assassination, the Popular Party seems to have consciously decided to avoid blaming Zapatero's government. "Everyone knows what I think," said Mariano Rajoy. "The guilty ones are the assassins." Gustavo de Arístegui, the PP's chairperson for foreign affairs, concurred: "The only responsible parties are the terrorists themselves," he said, adding, "All democratic Spaniards are enemies of terrorism. There is only one path to crush terrorism, and that is the rule...
...latest polls, conducted before the assassination, gave the Socialists a 4.1% lead over the Popular Party, and with voter turnout emerging as a key factor in these elections, the effect of today's killing is, in fact, hard to predict. Jose Ramon Montero, political scientist at Madrid's Autonomous University, believes the assassination "will certainly have an effect, but perhaps in a different direction than you might expect. Certainly there is a parallel with what happened in the last elections," he says, referring to the surprise ouster of the Popular Party government in the wake of the 2004 Madrid subway...