They are made from handpicked organic Zimbabwean cotton that has been shuttle loomed and then hand dipped in natural indigo 24 times.

Much the same along with accusations of widespread vote counting irregularities could be said about the recent election held after Chávez died, which installed his handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro.

The country s once powerful military, which collapsed with the demise of communism in 1991, was being rebuilt. And Putin s handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, had been eased into power, while Putin downshifted into the premiership.

Tung was handpicked by former Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 1996 and was openly endorsed by Jiang for a second term in 2002. But he was not popular because the public viewed him as a puppet of China and a crony of big developers, particularly Li Ka shing, Hong Kong s richest person.

The second issue concerns the composition and the voting rules of the handpicked 1,200 member election committee that will choose the Chief Executive in the future. The current proposed arrangements would permit the Chinese government to veto any candidate that it did not like, prompting criticism that what is on offer is an Iranian style election You can vote for anyone we choose.

Egyptians are already wary of token reforms à la Tunisia, where longstanding President Zine El Abidin Bin Ali created a caricature of a constitutional amendment that appeared to open the door for competitive presidential elections, but then staged a sham contest with a few handpicked opponents. In previous Tunisian presidential referenda, Bin Ali routinely received 99 of the vote he now got 96 .

MEXICO CITY The last time Mexico experienced a political crisis more serious than the one it is undergoing today was in 1994, when a group of so called Zapatista guerrillas staged a semi armed uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. The president s handpicked successor was assassinated, and, as if that was not enough, the value of the peso had plummeted by nearly 70 .

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi handpicked Abe as his successor to continue his administration s central policies divorcing the LDP from pork barrel politics and consolidating the huge non performing loans in the private sector that resulted from the collapse of Japan s property market bubble in the early 1990 s. By revitalizing and modernizing Japan s financial system, and by getting politicians out of the game, Koizumi intended to reinvigorate the Japanese economy.