•Rodrigo Paz Pereira is the frontrunner in Bolivia’s first-round presidential election which took place on Sunday.© Freddy Barragán/AP

Bolivia is set to elect a non-left wing president after nearly two decades of near-continuous rule by the incumbent socialist party, according to official preliminary results.

Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira and former president Jorge Quiroga came in first and second place respectively in Sunday’s presidential elections.

Neither received a high enough share of the vote to secure an outright win, so the vote will go to a run-off between these two candidates, due in October.

Paz Pereira, of the Christian Democratic Party, was a surprise vote leader, after opinion polls had suggested Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman, was the frontrunner.

The electoral authorities said it can take up to three days to finalise the results.

•Myanmar junta’s leader Min Aung Hlaing.

Myanmar will begin its general elections on 28 December, its military government announced on Monday.

BBC news report that this will be the first vote since the junta’s leader Min Aung Hlaing, seized power in a bloody coup in 2021, and imprisoned democratically elected leader Aung San Sung Kyi.

Myanmar has been embroiled in a civil war since, with deadly battles between the military and ethnic armed groups, many of whom have said they would not permit voting in their areas.

Previous plans to hold an election were repeatedly delayed as the military has struggled to contain an opposition insurgency which has gained control over much of the country.

Some 55 parties have registered for the polls, state media said Monday, adding that nine of them plan to compete for seats nationwide.

The first phase of the multi-party democratic general election for each parliament will begin on Sunday, 28 December 2025,” Myanmar’s election commission said in a statement.

Dates for the subsequent phases will be announced later.

Felix Morka, the National Publicity Secretary
All Progressives Congress (APC) on Friday urged the Party faithful, supporters and all Nigerians to disregard the report labelling the party as a terrorist organisation by the Canadian Immigration Appeal Division [IAD), saying its false and misleading.

Morka, in a statement on Friday, stated categorically that the Canadian court did not declare APC as a terrorist organisation, contrary to highly erroneous media reports in circulation.

He clarified:

“As reported, the declaration was allegedly made in the case of Douglas Egharevba and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, in which the Applicant (Douglas Egharevba) sought judicial review of a decision by ] which determined that the Applicant was inadmissible in Canada under its Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).

In a decision in the matter dated June 17, 2025, Judge Phuong T.V. Ngo dismissed the application for judicial review on the ground that the Applicant was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and that the PDP was an organization engaged in acts of subversion under paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the IRPA making him inadmissible in Canada.

In his analysis, the Judge stated, “As such, applying the reasonableness standard of review, I cannot find the IAD’s conclusion that the Elections in question constituted a democratic process or institution and that the PDP, its members and supporters engaged in subversive acts committed against the electoral process for the improper purpose of maintaining political power to be unreasonable.”

To be clear, the only reference to APC in the entire 16-paged decision was in the introductory “Background”, Paragraph 4, where the court referenced a “Background Declaration Form in which the Applicant stated that “he was a member of the People’s Democratic Party [PDP] of Nigeria from December 1999 until December 2007, and a member of All Progressives Congress [APC] party of Nigeria from December 2007 until May 2017.”

For the record, APC was not in existence as of 2007.

The Party was registered in 2013. The Applicant’s claim of membership of APC as of 2007 is evidently false, as he could not have been a member of APC, which didn’t exist then.

For the avoidance of doubt, we dare to state that the court never made any determination on the question of terrorism in its decision. In the Judge’s own words:

“Having found that the IAD’s analysis on subversion was reasonable, this is sufficient to dismiss the application for review. I will therefore refrain from analysing the IAD’s findings on terrorism.”

Clearly, reports that the APC was declared a terrorist organisation by the Canadian court in this matter are patently erroneous, if not mischievous.

The court did not make such a declaration, and could not have done so, as that would be an unjustifiable overreach and a major breach of fair hearing, among other due process rights, given that APC was not a party to the proceedings.

Such a decision would also have been of absolute irrelevance as being made without jurisdiction, and of no extraterritorial applicability or significance. “