Political Parties

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Acknowledging that it may have gone far outside the law in granting a blanket amnesty to top officials of South Africa's ruling government, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said yesterday that it would submit its decision to a court for review.vTC The amnesty, granted last month to 37 leaders of the African National Congress, including Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, immediately drew fire from South Africa's other political parties.They pointed out that the amnesty was unlike any other issued by the commission.

THE LATE, LATE SHOW Wednesday night didn't draw an Olympic-size audience, but it wasn't for lack of drama. We're talking about the one on C-SPAN, starring the U.S. House of Representatives and featuring the debate and vote on the Shays-Meehan bill, which sharply limits so-called "soft money" contributions to political parties. The show had everything: tension, mystery, histrionics, a big-star cameo appearance (Charlton Heston phoned in on behalf of the National Rifle Association) and - best of all - a happy ending.

SUNDAY'S PARLIAMENTARY election is likely to be ""TC watershed event in Russia's short post-communist experience. For the first time, voters will elect members of the state Duma to full four-year terms. More significantly, the vote will be scrutinized for hints as to who is likely to win next summer's presidential election.Because of the lack of conventional political parties and the confusing way in which the Duma is elected, Sunday's outcome is unlikely to provide any firm conclusions about what might happen in the presidential election.

The third round of Arab-Israeli peace talks ended in Washington with little to show. Israel and Jordan agreed on the shape of a table. Israel and Syria went nowhere. The Palestinians presented a plan for their independence in occupied territories, which Israel agreed was a bargaining position, and rejected. Israel did not present its own plan, owing to confusion at home.Few would think that Israel's government was giving away the store. But two tiny political parties in Israel thought just that.

THERE ARE NO second acts for third parties in America, but that may be about to change. This time a third party is going to be greatly subsidized by the federal government. Because Ross Perot got 19 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential contest, he, as nominee of the movement now called the Reform Party, is entitled to $29.2 million from the Treasury. That is only half as much as the Democratic and Republican nominees will receive -- but it is hardly chicken feed.If it is enough to get and keep a Perot candidacy up in the polls, he should be guaranteed a place in the Clinton-Dole debates.

BY THE TIME the U.S. Senate finishes burying campaign finance reform efforts for the year -- perhaps as early as this week -- there should be little difficulty separating the reformers from the defenders of the corrupting system that now rules national politics.The reformers are the ones vigorously pushing for passage of the McCain-Feingold bill to ban unlimited donations to political parties and curb the influence of special-interest advocacy commercials -- which are not subject to contribution limits, either.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's opinion concerning the voting rights of 17-year-olds is a welcome return to sensibility. The political parties have long enjoyed the right to determine how to select their nominees for office. And for decades in Maryland, teens who turn 18 before the general election have had the right to vote in the primary - even if they're only 17 at the time. How did 17-year-olds suddenly lose this right? It was the result of an unfortunate chain of events starting with last year's Court of Appeals decision striking down the state's recently enacted early voting law. The court's new interpretation of the state constitution applied general election standards to primaries.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview broadcast yesterday Wednesday that he might break an agreement he made with opposition parties that requires him to resign as army chief by the end of the year. The plan had been praised as a step toward the restoration of full democracy in Pakistan. In the interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, said he would consider several issues in deciding whether to give up his army post.

WASHINGTON - Tired of pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into politics every year, a growing number of corporate CEOs are not waiting for new campaign finance laws to rein in political money. They've simply quit giving the big bucks. Steve Palko, the president and co-founder of Cross Timbers Oil in Fort Worth, Texas, donated about $150,000 a year to politicians, including unregulated "soft money" donations to political parties. Finally, he decided he could no longer justify it. "This way of doing business, I think, erodes the public confidence in the system," he said.

WASHINGTON - The new campaign finance law came under a strong attack at the Supreme Court yesterday, with lawyers for the statute's opponents warning that it would weaken the national political parties, intrude on the states' electoral systems and infringe on the free speech of corporations and labor unions. While defenders of the law offered abundant counter-arguments during the court's unusual special sitting - the first time since the Watergate tapes case in 1974 that the justices interrupted their summer recess to hear an argument - its fate appeared highly uncertain.