The coming week | The week ahead | Economist.com

A terrorist trial and various elections in the news this week

AFP

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• AFRICA'S most populous country holds a presidential election on April 21st, with the incumbent, Olusegun Obasanjo, scheduled to bow out from high office. It is a tense time in Nigeria, an oil-rich but troubled west African nation with some 140m people. The election has been marred by claims that the poll is being rigged in favour of Mr Obasanjo's preferred successor, Umaru Yar'Adua, a northern state governor. A popular opposition candidate, the vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, has in effect been blocked from running through legal manoeuvres. Amid fears of violence and chaos, customers have started withdrawing money from banks.

• THIS week the trial of José Padilla, an American accused of being part of a conspiracy to support al-Qaeda from inside America, is expected to begin. Mr Padilla was detained five years ago and was first accused of planning to use a “dirty bomb”; George Bush has already called him a “bad guy” and an “enemy combatant”. His detention without trial generated a great deal of controversy, with the Supreme Court asked to rule whether an American could be held for so long. The court avoided giving a ruling after a criminal trial date was finally set for Mr Padilla.

• THE first round of voting to elect a new president takes place in France. The two favourites to go through to the subsequent run-off face a tough final week of campaigning. Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, and Ségolène Royal of the leftist Socialist Party lead the polls but snapping at their heals with a late but faltering surge is François Bayrou, a centrist. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the perennial candidate of the far right, along with a host of other candidates may sway the outcome. The final week of campaigning could prove tricky for the gaffe-prone Ms Royal while Mr Sarkozy must hope that his tough-cop image persuades voters not to shift their allegiances to either Mr Bayrou or Mr Le Pen.

• BHUTAN is different. All citizens of the isolated and landlocked Himalayan kingdom are required to wear national costume and smoking is banned. Satellite television arrived only a few years ago, the national sport is archery and the reigning monarch once declared that “Gross national happiness is more important than gross national product”. Democracy is a new arrival too. The gradual shift from absolute monarchy to the constitutional kind is set to progress with parliamentary elections in 2008. Next week, to familiarise both voters and officialdom with the alien procedures of a democratic poll, the country will hold a mock election.