Former President Desi Bouterse, center, and Suriname’s new president, Chan Santokhi, left, during the inauguration ceremony in Paramaribo, Suriname, July 16, 2020 (AP photo by Ertugrul Kilic).

On July 13, with a handshake and a smile, long-ruling President Desi Bouterse handed over the reins of power in Suriname to Chan Santokhi, a former police chief who has tenaciously pursued mass murder charges against Bouterse for the last 15 years. “It won’t be an easy job,” said Bouterse, who had a parting trick to play on his rival. When Santokhi turned up to work the following week, he found his new office stripped of its IT equipment. Aside from procuring some new phones and computers, Santokhi faces three main challenges in governing this former Dutch colony on the […]

Demonstrators hold a Brazilian flag to support Operation Car Wash and former judge Sergio Moro, in front of Supreme Court headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, Sept. 25, 2019 (AP photo by Eraldo Peres).

Until recently, it was one of the brightest, most promising trends in Latin America, and one of the strongest arguments for optimism about its future. But tragically, the fight against corruption, which had made determined strides in its drive to uproot graft, influence peddling and venal misuse of resources, has not only stalled—it has shifted into reverse. The backsliding is now converging with the scourge of the coronavirus, adding to the many challenges that Latin Americans face, and raising the barriers to recovery after the pandemic ends. Latin America is not alone in hitting a wall in its attempts to […]

Luis Abinader, the president-elect of the Dominican Republic, is surrounded by journalists at a voting center on Election Day, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, July 5, 2020 (AP photo by Tatiana Fernandez).

In a general election earlier this month, voters in the Dominican Republic dealt a stinging defeat to the ruling Dominican Liberation Party, or PLD, which has dominated politics in the country since 2004. Luis Abinader, an economist and businessman who has never held political office, was elected president, and his Modern Revolutionary Party, or PRM, emerged as the largest party in Congress. The vote was initially scheduled to be held in May, but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken a devastating toll on the Dominican Republic. The country has reported over 57,000 cases of COVID-19, including […]

People protest against a decision by then-President Jimmy Morales to shut down the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG, in Guatemala City, Sept. 1, 2018 (AP photo by Moises Castillo).

During its 12 years of existence, the United Nations-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG, pursued corruption investigations into high-level political players and business figures. The commission’s efforts resulted in hundreds of arrests and indictments, including of a former president, Otto Perez Molina, and his vice president, in 2015. CICIG’s work also helped build anti-corruption-related capacity and expertise among Guatemala’s legal community. But CICIG was forced to shut down last year after then-President Jimmy Morales refused to renew its mandate. Since then, many judges and prosecutors have faced a campaign of harassment, verbal attacks and death threats, forcing […]

Police stand guard at the National Palace as protestors demonstrate against then-President Jimmy Morales and corruption in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Sept. 20, 2018 (AP photo by Moises Castillo).

During more than a dozen years in operation, the United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym CICIG, helped expose a shocking degree of high-level corruption. One case even resulted in the resignation and arrest of then-President Otto Perez Molina and his vice president in 2015. However, the commission was forced to shut down in September 2019 when Molina’s successor, Jimmy Morales, refused to extend its mandate. In the months since the commission shut down, there has been a concerning rise in verbal attacks and death threats against Guatemala’s anti-corruption community, forcing some of them […]

A man wearing a face mask walks near a homeless person in Lima, Peru, July 14, 2020 (AP photo by Rodrigo Abd).

As the coronavirus pandemic takes a terrible toll across Latin America, with over 3.5 million cases and nearly 150,000 deaths, the region is increasingly facing a financial and humanitarian emergency. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, GDP is forecast to contract by 9.3 percent in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund—the region’s largest economic contraction on record, and far worse than the outlook for African and Asian economies. The United Nations expects the value of South America’s exports to fall by nearly a fifth this year due to shrinking international demand and weaker commodity prices. Foreign investment has also […]

Surinamese President Desi Bouterse observes a military parade after being sworn in for his second term, in Paramaribo, Suriname, Aug. 12, 2015 (AP photo by Ertugrul Kilic).

Any doubt that the coronavirus pandemic can transform political realities was erased Monday when one of the world’s most entrenched strongmen was formally swept out of power in the tiny South American nation of Suriname. The National Assembly, Suriname’s legislature, officially named Chan Santokhi, a former police chief who prevailed in elections in May, to replace longtime President Desi Bouterse. Grounds for removing Bouterse, who was convicted of murder last year, have never been in short supply. But it took the pandemic and Bouterse’s spectacular mismanagement to bring an end to his rule. Until the coronavirus arrived, Bouterse withstood challenge […]

President Donald Trump and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House, Washington, July 8, 2020 (AP photo by Evan Vucci).

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Edward Alden is filling in for Kimberly Ann Elliott. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador went to Washington last week to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and celebrate this month’s official launch of the updated and rebranded North American Free Trade Agreement, now the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Critics of Lopez Obrador, including former Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Arturo Sarukhan, called the visit “a colossal error, electorally, diplomatically and strategically.” His supporters said Mexico has little choice but to curry favor with Trump despite the insults he has hurled at the country and […]

A Kashmiri man waits for customers behind a half-closed shutter during a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the coronavirus, in Srinagar, Kashmir, May 16, 2020 (AP photo by Mukhtar Khan).

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown a harsh light on the long-standing structural weaknesses of global labor markets and of the protections available for workers. The estimated 2 billion people worldwide toiling away in the informal sector—in jobs that are not backed by contracts or institutions, and that are not monitored or taxed by governments—are the new economically vulnerable. Across the globe, in developing and developed economies alike, these often-overlooked workers are bearing the brunt of COVID-19 and its accompanying economic depression, and will continue to even when economies start to recover. Because many of these employees work off the books […]

President Donald Trump and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the Rose Garden at the White House, Washington, July 8, 2020 (AP photo by Evan Vucci).

From the moment Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced plans for his first state visit to the United States, where he would meet with President Donald Trump at the White House, the news was greeted with a mixture of revulsion and astonishment. At home and abroad, critics and observers marveled at a decision to undertake a diplomatic mission so rife with potential to cause damage to Mexico and such negligible upside. The lone voices of support maintained that the lopsided odds belied the finely honed political instincts of AMLO, as Mexico’s president is widely known. Dismissing his critics, the […]

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots in the Kentucky primary election, Lexington, Ky., June 23, 2020 (AP photo by Timothy D. Easley).

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, “Our knowledge of what we’re able to do as [election] observers is evolving as our knowledge of the virus evolves,” says David Carroll, director of the Democracy Program at the Carter Center. Carroll, who has participated in dozens of independent election observation missions around the world, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman on the Trend Lines podcast this week to talk about how democracies are adjusting to COVID-19 in the way they administer elections, and how the pandemic is changing the facts on the ground for observers. Listen to the full conversation here: And if you like what […]

A woman holds up a sign reading “AMLO out” in Spanish during a protest in front of the National Palace, Mexico City, May 30, 2020 (AP photo by Rebecca Blackwell).

Around the world, the blunt measures imposed by central governments to fight the COVID-19 pandemic are causing widespread economic hardship. In its latest report on the state of the global economy, the International Monetary Fund forecasts that most advanced and emerging economies will experience their worst downturns since the Great Depression, as global GDP is set to contract by an estimated 4.9 percent this year. The recovery will not come fast, it warns, with growth expected to be sluggish in 2021. Mexico is no exception, but its economic troubles predate the pandemic. And while most countries are crafting policies to […]

A man casts his vote for the parliamentary election at a polling station in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2020 (AP photo by Ahn Young-joon).

The coronavirus pandemic has created a vexing challenge for democratic societies: How to safely hold free and fair elections. Some countries that saw early success in containing the spread of COVID-19, like South Korea, have been able to hold national elections safely, while a slew of others have been forced to postpone their votes. The pandemic has also changed the facts on the ground for independent election observers. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by David Carroll, director of the Democracy Program at the Carter Center. He has participated in dozens of observation missions […]

Police special forces stand next to illegal mining machinery in Peru’s Tambopata province, April 1, 2019 (AP photo by Rodrigo Abd).

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Neil Bhatiya is filling in for Kimberly Ann Elliott this week. Last week, the presidency of the Financial Action Task Force, the global intergovernmental standard-setter for combatting illicit financial threats, passed from China to Germany. The presidency of the FATF is an important platform for countries to highlight critical threats to the global financial system. Among Germany’s incoming priorities for its two-year term is a focus on the illicit financial flows behind many crimes related to the environment. Such a campaign is an overdue step to combat a lucrative but not widely understood criminal enterprise, one […]