Nearly 500,000 people have voted by absentee ballot, and state officials estimate that $50 million has been spent on election preparations.

And all sides have expressed confidence in the election preparations.

The Senate took over the election preparations.

"We feel our election preparations are really in jeopardy."

Several nations have pledged money for election preparations.

As in all 300 congressional districts, a council of local citizens oversees the election preparations.

Some Western officials and opposition politicians had been critical of the election preparations almost from the time the first international supervisors arrived in January.

Formal election preparations are now set to start Jan. 31.

All the same, we doubt whether such an initiative would be effective in view of the uncertainty surrounding the election preparations.

For its part, the Council is of course going to continue to monitor the election preparations very carefully.