With practically all votes now counted in Finlandīs presidential Election,Finlandīs new head of state is the Social Democrat Foreign Minister Miss. Tarja Halonen, who has beaten her Central Party rival Mr. Esko Aho by roughly 100,000 Votes. In a nail-biting hour, Halonen first confounded the pundits by taking a majority of the advance votes, and then held on to her lead, despite fears that her support has eroded in the last week up to todayīs polling. The percentages showed halonen ahead by 51.6% to 48.4%. The result further indicatees the clear division of urban and rural Finland, with Aho taking the lionīs share of rural votes while Halonen is dominant in the large population centres of the south. The result is also a feather in the cap of the pollsters, who predicted in the later stages of the Campaign that Halonen would triumph 52-48. It appears as though the effects of the Austrian government negotiations and the EUīs reaction to these have not been sufficient to lift Ahoīs support in what was otherwise an election marked by a high level of consensus between the candidates. Tarja Halonen thus becomes Finlandīs 11th President and the first Woman to hold the position. With Love Bakary Bojang ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------