It seemed, at first glance, like a fairly humdrum story about bilateral cooperation among African officials. Earlier this week, The Star, a Kenyan newspaper, reported that lawmakers from Zambia had traveled to Kenya to meet with members of the government’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission at their offices in Nairobi. The Zambians’ goal, the report said, was “to learn how to effectively fight corruption.” In the current political environment in Kenya, however, the story prompted immediate expressions of derision and exasperation. As it made the rounds on social media, a number of Kenyans made clear their conviction that if Zambian officials [...]
A new attorney general took office in Guatemala last week amid sharp tensions over the role of a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission that has helped bring high-profile charges against some of the country’s most powerful politicians. Maria Consuelo Porras, a former substitute judge for Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, will run the country’s Public Ministry and direct its criminal, human rights and anti-corruption investigations. The outgoing attorney general, Thelma Aldana, and her predecessor, Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey, showed impressive leadership and independence in investigating and prosecuting these sorts of cases. Now their enemies want those advances reversed. Across Central America, public [...]
In a result few pollsters and analysts predicted, including myself, last week Malaysia’s opposition coalition, led by 92-year-old former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, defeated the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Najib Razak in national elections that marked the first transfer of power in Malaysia’s modern history. The long-dominant United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, and the coalition it leads, Barisan Nasional, have governed Malaysia since its independence in 1957. To the Najib government’s credit, despite rumors on election night and the following morning that it would take measures to defraud the voters, or prevent a change of government, the transition [...]
