MOLDOVA: DEAD MAN VOTING…

After six weeks of stalemate, the parliament by a one-vote margin approved a new government. Casting the deciding vote was Ilie Ilascu, whose smuggled ballot managed to reach the parliament in Chisinau from his prison cell in Tiraspol, where he is under a sentence of death. Ilascu was arrested as a terrorist in the pro-Russian breakaway province of Transdniester in 1992 and condemned there in a farcical trial in 1993. Although the chief witness against him has recanted, authorities in Moldova refuse to recognize the authority of the Transdniester courts and so prevent the filing of an appeal.