Following at a deferential distance was her loyal consort, Burton Shipley, a bank manager and former farmer whose two children she raised before entering politics. Her family have accompanied her, helping her project herself as a wife and mother who identifies with the concerns of Middle New Zealand – unlike Ms Clark, voters were supposed to infer. She sailed down Queen Street, the main commercial thoroughfare, like a battleship, leaving a trail of starstruck shoppers and office workers. Greeting all with her catchphrase “Hi, I’m Jenny, how are you?”, she dived into shops, posed for photographs and pumped hands with the ferocity of a slot-machine addict.

That would give Helen Clark’s centre-left Labour 50 seats in the 120- seat parliament, meaning it would have to form a coalition with the left- wing Alliance party and probably the Greens. The most striking feature of the poll was a 10 percentage point gap that has opened between Labour and the ruling Nationals, who are led by Jenny Shipley, the Prime Minister .
Yesterday Mrs Shipley went on her last pre-poll walkabout, in central Auckland. The last major poll before today’s election, in the New Zealand Herald, showed support for Labour surging to 39.8 per cent, up 2 per cent in the nine days since the paper’s last poll. Government institutions, such as the Senate, are widely seen as places where the corrupt military have re-invented themselves as democrats.. NEW ZEALAND’S Labour Party is poised to take power after nine years in opposition. But, when he was elected, he was seen as an acceptable candidate for the Hausas because he is a former general. But despite an economic upturn, the population remains restive Life for the ordinary Nigerian has not improved.

From the time of independence from Britain in 1960 until his election this year, the country had known mainly Hausa- dominated, military rule.President Obasanjo is a Yoruba. The military remains sufficiently powerful to stoke ethnic frictions if it wishes to destabilise the civilian government.Nigeria, which is Africa’s most populous country and one of the world’s top oil producers, has witnessed widespread bloodshed since Mr Obasanjo’s inauguration at the end of May. The area has a considerable Hausa population, the northern tribe which is a minority in Lagos and the rest of the south-west. Nigerian democrats view an ethnic crisis as the biggest threat to President Obasanjo, who has proved himself a reformer since his election in February ended 15 years of military rule.During their years in power, successive juntas argued that only they could keep Nigeria from splitting along tribal lines. The Lagos security clampdown, ordered by President Olusegun Obasanjo, was centred on Ketu. Local journalists said the official death toll, 27, was probably a vast under-estimate.Ketu, near Lagos airport, is a flashpoint because it has a large market and traders – whose specialisms are often determined by their tribe – meet there.

In another Lagos suburb, Ketu, more than 16 bodies, most charred after being set ablaze with petrol and many hacked with machetes, lay on the streets following the deaths of at least 27 people on Thursday. Residents said 15 children and their teachers were butchered at a nursery school.
Police feared copycat flare-ups between Hausas and Yorubas – Nigeria’s biggest and most influential ethnic groups – elsewhere in the country and asked Nigerian broadcasters to refrain from using pictures of the Lagos clashes.Separately, as reporters were barred from entering areas of ethnic tension in the Niger Delta, embassies were told to stop issuing automatic visas to foreign journalists. The alert was issued in the Ogba district of Nigeria’s commercial capital. IN THE biggest test so far of Nigeria’s transition to democracy, paramilitary police with orders to shoot rioters on sight rushed to suppress a new outbreak of violence in Lagos yesterday after clashes between Nigeria’s biggest ethnic groups killed more than 45 people.

“One died of gunshot wounds and the other two of knife wounds.”The fate of the Suai Catholics was one of the most agonising moments of the East Timor violence which erupted after the territory’s population voted overwhelmingly for independence in the 30 August UN-supervised referendum.On 4 September, the UN decided to evacuate Suai, to the dismay of the people, including Father Hilario, one of the most respected local priests.”Father Hilario was beside himself when we left,” a UN official said, a few hours after the evacuation “He thinks they are all going to be massacred.”. “We have performed autopsies on the bodies [of the priests],” Mr Munir said. “We found three bodies in the first grave, 11 in the second grave and 11 in the third grave,” a member of the team, Munir, was quoted as saying in the Jakarta Post.Three of the bodies have been identified as Roman Catholic priests last seen alive trying to shield some 2,400 people from the Laksaur (Eagle) militia. Investigators have found the bodies of at least 25 people, including three priests, massacred in their churches by pro- Indonesia militiamen in September. The bodies, in three graves inside the Indonesian province of West Timor, are believed to be from the town of Suai where some 100 people were shot and macheted trying to shelter from militias in the aftermath of August’s vote for independence.
The graves were discovered by human rights investigators appointed by the government in Jakarta. ONE OF the worst atrocities of the violence in East Timor was uncovered yesterday. Many labour unions argue that the jobs created destroy good work in favour of low-paid employment in places where unions are banned or restricted, and where child and prison labour is permitted.Critics want the WTO to be more democratic, saying that its negotiations take place behind closed doors and exclude the people whose lives are affected..