Domestic Politics Archive

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombians will head to the polls on Sunday, May 30, in what has unexpectedly become not only the closest presidential race in years, but one that is too close to call. The neck-and-neck contest pits outsider Antanus Mockus, a quirky intellectual and former two-time mayor of Bogotá, against former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, a veteran political mover-and-shaker and heir to the outgoing conservative President Alvaro Uribe. All polls suggest that neither of the two contenders, in a field of six main candidates, will gain more than the 50 percent of votes needed to avoid a second-round […]

KIGALI, Rwanda — Walking the streets of Rwanda’s tidy capital, it’s easy to forget that just 16 years have passed since this country’s grisly genocide. In this modern city of approximately 1 million, roads are smooth, sidewalks clean, and the crime, pollution and hassle of most African cities absent. Across Kigali, rising office towers reflect GDP growth that has averaged 8 percent over the last five years. In the countryside, though poverty remains rife, small-scale farmers have seen tangible benefits from the creation of cooperatives, increased use of fertilizers, a revival of the export coffee industry, and a unique system […]

MITROVICA, Kosovo — Back in 2003, when U.S. officials optimistically predicted that American forces would be “greeted as liberators” by the Iraqi people, their minds probably conjured images of the mass euphoria that welcomed NATO troops to Kosovo in 1999. During that war, cheering Kosovar Albanians chanted “NATO, NATO!!” as the U.S.-led military force entered the territory after pushing out Serbian forces with a 78-day bombardment. A NATO-led peacekeeping force known as KFOR has remained here ever since, helping the fledgling country get on its feet. But NATO, facing demanding commitments in Afghanistan and potentially elsewhere, is itching to pull […]

Popularly, Madagascar is known as an exotic and verdant island populated by cheeky animated characters voiced by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. But politically, it remains one of Africa’s most volatile countries, regularly awash in coups, plots and prevarications that keep its tourist-dependent population in grinding poverty. The latest installment in the Indian Ocean island’s saga of political exploitation would seem to combine the two, pitting a yogurt salesman against a radio disc jockey in the battle for supremacy. In March 2009, following weeks of anti-government protests, Andry Rajoelina — the fresh-faced mayor of the capital, Antananarivo — ousted President […]

Congo wants the U.N. peacekeepers out. Eleven years after one the world’s biggest peacekeeping forces deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo in a bid to tamp down on insurgent violence and oversee the resolution of a bloody civil war, DRC President Joseph Kabila has grown uncomfortable with the sometimes corrupt and ineffective blue-helmeted troops. “Don’t do anything for us,” Lambert Mende, Kabila’s information minister, told the U.N. “We will do it ourselves.” Kabila’s call for an end to the Mission of the U.N. in Congo (MONUC) comes at a time of renewed international interest in the DRC’s overlapping conflicts, […]

A new piece of legislation signed into law on Monday, May 24, by President Barack Obama has the potential to end one of Africa’s longest-running insurgencies. The “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Reconstruction Act” requires the Obama administration to prepare a multilateral strategy to eliminate the threat of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group originating in northern Uganda that has terrorized civilians in numerous African nations since the late 1980s. To be successful, however, policymakers charged with designing this strategy need to understand why the Ugandan government has failed to defeat the LRA in the past […]

As somebody who voted for President Barack Obama, I am surprised to find myself believing that he is slated to be — and more so, should be — a one-term president, a possibility that Obama himself has already broached publicly. It’s not any one thing he has or hasn’t done that has led me to this admittedly premature conclusion. Rather, it’s a growing realization that everything Obama brings to the table in terms of both deeds and vision suggests that history will judge him to be a transitional figure. He is a much-needed leveling-off from Bush-Cheney’s nosebleed-inducing foreign policy trajectory, […]

A bus carrying around 60 passengers, including at least 20 local policemen, was winding through a thick forest in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Monday when it suddenly exploded. At least 30 people were killed. Most of the rest were injured. Indian authorities were quick to pin the bomb attack on the country’s four-decade-old Naxalite-Maoist rebellion, named for Naxalbari, the town where the group first attacked government security forces in 1967. Naxalite fighters have been known to target security checkpoints along bus routes, and have warned bus operators not to allow police on board their vehicles. The Naxals, […]

Get a .pdf version of this report. In his state of the nation address to parliament on June 3, 2009, although speaking against a bleak recessionary backdrop, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma was at pains to stress policy continuity, referring to the country’s “functional constitutional democratic system” as the basis for celebrating “our culture of continuity and collective responsibility . . . [which makes] us a unique country in many respects.” Zuma further committed South Africa, among other things, to prioritizing Africa, strengthening regional integration in southern Africa, and supporting peace on the continent. His address was all the more […]

During Britain’s recent parliamentary elections, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg argued that the U.K. should scrap the proposed “like-for-like” replacement of its submarine-based nuclear deterrent, known as Trident, with a similar modernized system. As a possible alternative, Clegg’s party has suggested fitting Britain’s Astute-class submarines with nuclear cruise missiles, or in the event of a crisis, arming these same submarines with Trident missiles. Although such proposals may lead to financial savings, they are deeply flawed and could have far-reaching strategic and political implications for both the United Kingdom and its NATO allies. With Clegg now part of Prime Minister David […]

TOKYO — Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama made a strange admission on his recent trip to Okinawa to try to persuade local authorities to support his plan to realign U.S. military forces on the island — a plan that includes relocating the Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma to a less-populated part of the island. Hatoyama admitted that until his trip, he did not see any reason why the U.S. Marines should remain on Okinawa. But, he added, he had gradually come to understand the deterrent value of the Marines, not to mention other American forces in Japan, “as he […]

SKOPJE, Macedonia — When the old Yugoslavia tore itself apart during the 1990s, the people of Macedonia watched with dismay. Would they, too, experience the horror of war if they declared their independence from Belgrade? As it happened, Macedonia’s secession from Yugoslavia triggered only a token action from the Yugoslavian army. That, however, did not mean that Macedonia would join the community of nations without conflict or strife. Conflict did come, in the form of profound internal divisions that sparked a brief, low-grade war, and stubborn external obstacles that nearly blocked the way to international recognition. Almost two decades into […]

An edgy calm has settled over Nicaragua in the aftermath of political violence that erupted in Managua late last month. During a tense three-day period from April 19-22, supporters of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega attacked opposition congressmen — throwing stones and homemade mortars, burning vehicles, blockading roads, and forcibly denying the lawmakers’ entry to the National Assembly, where the legislative body usually conducts business. The immediate cause of the violence was Decree 03-2010. Issued by Ortega in January 2010, the decree allows for a number of public functionaries — ranging from Supreme Court judges to congressmen and electoral commissioners allied […]

BANGKOK — Red Shirt anti-government protesters have conditionally accepted Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s roadmap for national reconciliation in a move that is expected to end the rallies that have paralyzed parts of the capital for months. Opinions are mixed over whether the plan can bring lasting peace to a country whose unity has become increasingly fractured along lines of wealth, development and the urban/rural divide. But many analysts believe the proposed dissolution of Parliament in the second half of September followed by a general election on Nov. 14 will see the Red-Shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) bring […]

Wired magazine’s May cover presents Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, while the accompanying article salutes the “hacker culture” that “conquered the world.” Amid the political paralysis we now witness in Washington, it’s a timely reminder of how all the top talent of the Boomer generation went into business and technology, while the dregs went into politics. Don’t believe me? Try to imagine a politics-oriented magazine offering a similar cover: You couldn’t get more than half of America to agree upon a single Boomer politician of Gates’ historic stature. Boomer business leaders and technologists rebooted the world, playing seminal roles in […]

THIMPU, Bhutan — Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal returned home from the 16th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Bhutan on April 30 to face a political crisis in his landlocked Himalayan nation. On May 1, the country’s former prime minister, the Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (popularly known as Prachanda), began an indefinite general strike aimed at bringing down Kumar Nepal’s government. The ostensible reason was the latter’s almost-certain inability to meet a looming May 28 deadline for a new constitution, part of the 2006 peace agreement that ended a decade-long Maoist insurgency. But a […]

A few weeks ago, the United States had cautious grounds for optimism in terms of both Iran and Iraq. Election results in Iraq had opened the possibility of a more inclusive national government being formed, one that might finally begin to build on the breathing room obtained at such cost by the surge — and which would permit the orderly drawdown of U.S. forces over the next year. On Iran, there seemed to be an emerging international consensus that Iran’s nuclear program was deserving of sanctions: Both Russia and China signaled that they were prepared to consider new measures designed […]