One of Argentina’s former military leaders, Jorge Videla, has been jailed for the torture and murder of dozens of people during the Argentine government’s “Dirty War” against suspected leftist activists. Videla will serve a life sentence for his role in the war, during which as many as 30,000 Argentines were detained, tortured and disappeared during between 1976 and 1983.
When then-Col. Hugo Chávez launched a military coup against the civilian government of Venezuela in 1992, he had not yet grasped the potential value of winning a democratic election. Luckily for Chávez, his coup attempt failed, and he survived to play the democracy game. Today, 12 years after winning his first election for what at the time was meant to be a single five-year presidential term, Chávez has become a master of the game, writing and rewriting the rules, and testing the willingness of his followers to believe they still live in a democratic country. There is no certainty, however, […]
Members of the Belarus opposition announce further protests and condemn government crackdowns following the country’s recent election, which resulted in a landslide fourth-term victory for incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko.
For Ban Ki-moon, the past few weeks have arguably been the most dramatic he has encountered since becoming United Nations secretary-general nearly four years ago. In Côte d’Ivoire, U.N. peacekeepers are guarding the internationally recognized winner of this month’s presidential election while the country slides toward chaos. Meanwhile, in New York, the Security Council spent Sunday locked in fruitless debates on the simmering Korean crisis. Ban, as South Korea’s former foreign minister, can do little to shape the council’s discussions of his home country’s security. He has based his tenure on maintaining good relations with both Washington and Beijing, and […]
The International Criminal Court (ICC) will rule on whether to issue summonses for six men accused of crimes against humanity for their alleged roles in violence following Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election. But in announcing the suspects’ names on Dec. 15, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo indicted the entire East African nation, saying that “we had to launch this because nothing was happening in Kenya.” It was an overt and pointed critique of the government of national unity born from the post-election violence. Although only barely able to hold itself together, the government has managed to strengthen Kenya’s already entrenched culture […]
This report offers a closer look at the background and political career of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president and popular leader enjoyingsupportin Sudan’s north.
A thorn in the side of the military, the Taraf newspaper has been the source of most of the revelations of major scandals and conspiracies in Turkey over the past three years, including an alleged military coup d’état plot.
Ukrainian Parliament came crashing to a halt when a fast but furious brawl broke out between members of the opposition and deputies from the ruling party. Fists began flying when opposition members blocked the parliament chamber, demanding abuse charges against their leader, Yulia Timoshenko, be dropped. Four politicians required medical attention for injuries sustained in the fight.
It has been said that the transition of power is the weakest part of democracy. If developments surrounding Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections are any indication, the same might also be true — at least in some paradoxical sense — for authoritarian governments. Outside analysts generally agree that the country’s Nov. 28 elections were wracked by widespread fraud and poll-rigging, resulting in a nearly across-the-board victory for President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). However, as the nation’s crippled opposition now bands together to form a “shadow parliament,” the extent to which the ruling party will be able to use […]
In late-November, a 40-car motorcade drove through New York City toward Presbyterian Hospital, bringing Saudi King Abdullah along with dozens of his accompanying princes and dignitaries to an important medical appointment. The 86-year-old king, whose entourage reportedly took over the hospital’s entire VIP floor and much of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, had come to New York for surgery on a slipped disk and a blood clot pressing on nerves in his back, according to palace officials. The medical treatment would keep the king away from his duties for many weeks, and, as with any patient of that age, there was a […]
Peru is again on pace to end the year as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, due in no small measure to its ambitious strategy of economic diversification. In 2010, it finalized four new free-trade agreements (FTAs) — three with Asian partners — and launched the test phase of a joint stock exchange, Mercados Integrados Latinoamericanos (Integrated Latin American Markets, or MILA), with Colombia and Chile. Peru’s global and regional trade diplomacy has resulted in more domestic investment and a larger network of export markets for Peruvian goods. Peru’s open-market policies can also be partially credited with the country’s rapid […]
This is the second of a three-part series on Thailand’s slide toward authoritarian rule. The first article discussed the domestic effects of Thailand’s faltering democracy. This second article discusses the regional effects. A third article, to appear next week, will discuss the broader implications for the U.S.-China rivalry in Southeast Asia. The ripple effects of Thailand’s withering democracy are being felt across Southeast Asia, a highly dynamic region that has never fully embraced democracy. On one level, Thailand’s slide towards authoritarianism has deprived the key regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of its most-progressive leader. Until the […]
Dilma Rousseff won Brazil’s recent presidential elections handily, benefitting from both the enthusiastic backing of the enormously popular incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and from the mobilization of historically disadvantaged voters excited by identification with a woman candidate. Despite some nasty exchanges with her second-round opponent, José Serra of the Social Democratic Party, the campaign was characterized by the lack of a clear programmatic separation between the two candidates. Although markets moderately preferred Serra, a casual observer might be excused for failing to see much daylight between the two. The fact that the two leading candidates for office differed […]
The foreign firefighters have received their commendations, packed their bags, and headed home after helping to extinguish the worst forest fire in Israeli history. But now that the flames of the Carmel forest have been consigned to the crowded recesses of the nation’s most-painful memories, now that relatives of the 42 people killed in the inferno have buried their loved ones, a new firestorm — this one a political conflagration — is beginning to rage in Israel. All major natural disasters bring political consequences, and every politician wants to avoid being blamed for them. But sometimes even the most media-savvy […]
Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo used a prescient campaign slogan in the run-up to the country’s Nov. 28 presidential run-off election: “We win, or we win.” Despite regional and international recognition of Alassane Dramane Ouattara as the winner of the poll, Gbagbo wrapped himself in the Ivorian tricolor for an inauguration ceremony on Dec. 4, warning darkly against any threat to Ivorian sovereignty. The move followed a decision by the country’s Constitutional Court, stacked with Gbagbo cronies and acolytes, to void the Independent Electoral Commission’s results giving Ouattara 54 percent of the votes, saying that the commission’s delay in announcing […]
With U.S. defense spending cuts potentially on the agenda, U.S. policymakers would do well to use the United Kingdom’s experience as a cautionary example. The buildup to the recent defense cuts in the United Kingdom served as a call to battle for the U.K.’s military services. Anticipating steep reductions in funding, each of the three branches opened fire on their sister-organizations in the hope of redirecting budgetary knives. This development was neither surprising nor unintended. Civilian policymakers have long understood that they can benefit from inter-service conflict. When services attack one another, it provides fodder for cost-conscious budget-cutters to kill […]
The withering of Thailand’s democracy is closing potential avenues for political resolution of the country’s ongoing crisis and may lead toward widespread violence, and possibly even an armed revolt. The latest episode in this ongoing, self-destructive process was the Constitutional Court’s decision on Nov. 29 to dismiss a case against the ruling Democrat Party — which had been accused of electoral fraud — on a technicality. In ruling that the case was not brought within the prescribed time period, the court declined to consider the merits or the opinion of the prosecutor. The party risked being dissolved in the event […]