Domestic Politics Archive

Following a trend that has become depressingly familiar in West Africa over the past 18 months, army officers seized power in Niger on Feb. 18, removing President Mamadou Tandja from office. The coup ends a political crisis that began last year, when Tandja used a popular referendum to try to indefinitely prolong his term beyond its December 2009 limit. Despite the immediate condemnation of the coup by various international bodies, including the African Union and the United States, there was a sense that Tandja got what he deserved. His machinations last year to ram through legislation that not only prolonged […]

The recent election loss of Sri Lankan opposition candidate Gen. Sarath Fonseka underlines the island’s failure to build on its recently achieved peace, while his subsequent detention brought to light a threat to its democracy. Now, upcoming parliamentary elections, slated for April 8, represent the country’s last chance to build an opposition that can bring the ethnic grievances that drove Sri Lanka’s civil war into the political arena, while also maintaining a stable multiparty democracy. Incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa wasted little time in using his commanding electoral victory over Fonseka to consolidate his power. Shortly after the election, Fonseka was […]

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ranging over hills that slope gracefully down into Lake Victoria, Kampala is arguably one of the more beautiful capitals in Africa. But the city’s beauty not only belies the numbing poverty in which most of Uganda’s residents find themselves, it also masks the country’s ugly politics. Case in point: The outcome of Uganda’s 2011 presidential election is a foregone conclusion, and no one — whether Uganda’s electoral commission, its legions of international donors, or the investors in its newly discovered oil fields — is likely to do anything about it. President Yoweri Museveni rose to power in […]

Around this time last year, nostalgia abounded as Iranians inside and outside of the country recounted their memories of the Iranian revolution three decades prior. The Islamic regime, having rolled out the red carpet to commemorate yet another important milestone, looked as impregnable as ever before, and all eyes were on Washington and the new American president to see how he might impact the next evolutionary phase of the 30-year-old Iranian revolution. The idea that the course of this next phase might be dictated not by external actors, but by elements from within Iran itself seemed far-fetched. What a difference […]

TBILISI, Georgia — Former U.S. President George W. Bush has a highway named after him in Tbilisi, Georgia’s charming and gritty capital, to commemorate his lofty rhetoric in praise of the Caucasian republic’s Western turn in 2003. During Bush’s visit in 2005, the president even eschewed his famous early bedtime to dance the night away in the jubilant Georgian capital. Much has changed since 2005, though. When Russian tanks rolled into Georgian territory in August 2008, Bush chose not to rise to the defense of the West’s ally in the Caucasus. But that was just the beginning. From the indignity […]

Many Hondurans as well as outside observers of the country’s political crisis breathed a sigh of relief when Porfirio Lobo Sosa was sworn in as president on Jan. 27. Lobo’s inauguration took place nearly seven months to the day after the military, backed by influential opposition leaders, forced former President Manuel Zelaya to leave the country. That marked the beginning of a lengthy power struggle between Zelaya and interim President Roberto Michelletti that thrust the small Central American nation into the international spotlight. Lobo’s inauguration definitively answers the question of who will be president of Honduras in 2010, and closes […]

With Ukraine set to vote in the second round of its presidential election on Sunday, both candidates — Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych — have promised closer ties with Russia. Most foreign coverage of the campaign has focused on popular disillusionment with the Orange Revolution in particular, and with democracy in general, as the explanation for this dramatic shift since the heady days of 2004. Indeed, a survey of attitudes toward democracy in post-Soviet countries published by the Pew Research Center in November 2009 was sobering: The popularity of democracy had fallen in Ukraine by […]

When Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua left the country in November 2009 to seek treatment for a heart ailment, few anticipated that both he and Africa’s most populous country would end up on life support. The leadership crisis resulting from Yar’Adua’s failure to constitutionally hand over power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan — either at the time of his departure or since — has had more than just political implications for Nigeria. It has rocked the oil sector and threatened to undo substantial security gains made in the oil-producing Niger Delta, following a mostly successful amnesty and demobilization program for the […]

In the 11 years since Hugo Chávez became president of Venezuela, the country has experienced almost constant political and economic drama. The past decade brought a cinematic — and ultimately failed — coup d’état against the president, a national strike that brought the economy to its knees, border disputes complete with tank deployments, and a string of controversial nationalizations of private businesses, to name just a few of the remarkable developments that have marked the Age of Chávez. Despite the stiff competition of years past, though, 2010 is already taking shape as a year of reckoning for the country, the […]

BONN, Germany — Since the conservative Free Democratic Party’s (FDP) surprisingly strong showing in September elections here, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have taken a sharp turn to the right, pulled toward more fiscally conservative policies by FDP leader and foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle. Since the FDP and CDU formally became a coalition in October, tax breaks have been given to big business, little action has been taken against banks viewed by many here as the main culprits of the financial crisis, and threats of cuts in social services loom. While the business community has […]

Serious. It’s a word you’ll hear the Japanese use again and again to describe Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, and it’s one that just as accurately describes the foreign policy challenges Japan faces. It is just a few months since the Democratic Party of Japan seized power after more than five decades of virtually uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party control. Yet, Okada, 56, has already been forced to confront what some are calling a crisis in the U.S.-Japan relationship, follow through on the party’s pledge to withdraw from a highly symbolic but contentious refueling mission for U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, and warn […]

Early this past January, Turkey’s ambassadors from around the world gathered in Ankara for their annual meeting. The five-day gathering had the usual elements of gatherings from previous years: the seminars and debriefings, and the traditional group visit to the austere mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s secularizing founder. But there were also some significant differences this time around. Turkey’s foreign policy profile has increased dramatically in recent years, and the ambassadors’ meeting coincided with visits to Ankara by the Japanese, Brazilian and German foreign ministers, all of whom addressed the Turkish envoys. Turkey’s top diplomats were treated to […]

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. — Karl Marx. The results — both positive and negative — of Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim’s tenure during the presidency of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva cannot be explained simply by his or his team’s political will. His initiatives have both been harmed by and benefited from present circumstances, as well as legacies of the past. These factors range from the increasing diffusion […]

A number of recent moves suggest that Iran’s mullahs and secular leaders are bridging their recent differences, even if their reconciliation is a begrudging one. These developments are not wholly unexpected. Essentially, the two sides are putting their political, confessional, and personal self-interest above all other considerations. But although the shift will result in a short-term loss of leadership figures for the opposition, the Green Movement’s desire for sweeping change has now become mainstream. Perhaps the most prominent among opposition leaders who have recently come in from the cold is former two-time president and consummate political survivor, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi […]