Word: runoff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Serbs who valiantly voted for him, and all the Western leaders. By the opposition's tally of 51 percent to 36 percent, the challenger won a decisive victory. Milosevic defiantly said no, shaving the official count to 49 percent to 39 percent so he could call for a runoff next week that would buy him time to rewrite the popular verdict. The steely maneuverings of the humiliated President reminded one and all that Milosevic cannot be counted out until...
...lost badly, even according to his own count. But now he's challenging his opponents to a battle in the streets to claim their prize. After a triumphant opposition rally in Belgrade Wednesday night at which some 200,000 Serbs demanded that Milosevic abandon his plans to force a runoff vote on October 8, the strongman's electoral commission announced early Thursday that its final results showed opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica with 48.96 percent of the vote compared with Milosevic's 38.62 percent - and ordered the runoff poll because Kostunica had failed to clear the 50 percent hurdle...
...riding a wave of popular anger that will likely be sustained in the coming days as Milosevic blatantly tries to cheat Serb voters. But Milosevic may be calculating that if he manages to hold his regime together for a couple of weeks of street protest and conduct the runoff without Kostunica, the protests might eventually dissipate in disillusion. The challenge for the opposition, then, is to provoke a crisis in the regime in which Milosevic loses the support of the very security forces he's relying on to face down the demonstrators...
...percent margin required to claim first-round victory. Opposition leaders scoff at the figures released by Milosevic's electoral commission, confidently claiming that independent officials monitoring the count at local ballot stations confirm that Kostunica won 55 percent of the vote. Reading Milosevic's call for a runoff election as a play for time, the opposition has flatly rejected a second ballot and vowed to bring the country to a standstill through mass protest until Milosevic accepts the will of the electorate. The first battle of wills will come Wednesday night in Belgrade, where the opposition has scheduled a massive...
...momentum of protests. They believe they've won an outright victory in the first round, and they won't accept anything less. Nobody knows what the government will say, but it doesn't matter if Milosevic declares that he won the first round or if he orders a runoff election - either way, the opposition will call on people to defend their vote. All he has to decide now is whether to go quietly, or go the ugly way. The writing is on the wall - and it says, "He's finished...