Head of State Update

New URL

2008-01-06T12:11:00.001-08:00

We've Moved!

Please Visit the New Location:
http://headofstateupdate.wordpress.com/

Year Two

2008-01-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

Due to popular demand, I have decided to continue Head of State Update for another year.

However, I have really grown to hate Blogger, which makes blogging into a bafflingly frustrating ordeal, due to its horrible interface.

Therefore, Head of State Update 2008 will be hosted on WordPress, a much better blogging server. This site will remain here as my 2007 archive.

So head on over to the new site, and check out my first post detailing what I believe to be the Top 10 Head of State stories of 2007.

December pt. 2

2008-01-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

It has now been officially one year since I started Head of State Update. It's been a lot of fun, and a lot of work. It's no secret that my dedication in keeping the thing consistently updated has notably declined, largely because of of the other professional obligations in my life.

Are you interested in seeing Head of State Update continue for another year? Post your comments.

Anyway, let us finish DECEMBER

Solomons Stabalize Sans Sogavare

The parliament of the Solomon Islands voted no-confidence in their Prime Minister on December 13, booting him from office. Mr. Manasseh Sogavare had been in office for little over a year, taking office in May of 2006.

The Solomons is a very unstable and dangerous country, fraught by considerable turmoil. There are 27 islands in all, and their various tribal populations have taken to killing each other with renewed intensity over the last decade or so. There was a coup in 2000, and the Australians dispatched peacekeepers shortly after, helping stabilize the country.

The first post-coup elections were held in 2006, which resulted in a crazy mess of parties getting elected. The parliament only has 50 seats, but there are nine different parties represented more or less equally, which has made the country virtually ungovernable. They couldn't even decide who to elect as governor general, let alone prime minister.

They've now gone through four prime ministers in three years. The new guy's name is Derek Sikua. He used to be a member of the Sogavare administration, but jumped ship as that regime began to go downhill. The hope is that Prime Minister Sikua, a western-educated professor, will finally bring a clean, accountable, and stable government to the Islands, though I suppose it's just as likely that some scandal will end up turning the parliament against him, in time, and the Solomons will become the Pacific's new Nauru (see last post).

Not Much New in Kyrgyzstan

Igor Chudinov was elected as Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan on Christmas eve, a week after his political party swept to victory in the parliamentary elections. This is a bit of a non-event, and is unlikely to change much. Prime Minister Igor is an ally of the sitting president, a man who is accused of rigging elections, consolidating power, and basically betraying all the principles of the 2005 pro-democratic revolution that brought him to power.

New Presidents, one left, one right

Bigger news was to be had in South Korea, where former businessman Lee Myung Bak of the "Grand National Party" was elected president on December 19. A pro-business conservative, President Bak hopes to usher in greater economic growth in his nation's already very strong economy, through a series of reforms he (seriously) refers to as "Myung Baknomics."

Slovenia also got a new president that week, with Danilo Türk taking office as head of state of the Republic on December 22.

President Türk is a professor, and a career diplomat who has served time at both the UN and EU. I've noticed some news reports have been referring to him as an "independent," but that's only half-true. In the Slovenian system of government, which has a ton of political parties, the presidential candidates are always nominally independents. They then have to win the endorsement of numerous political parties in order to win the national election. So, in Mr. Türk's case, he was able to win the endorsement of most of the left-wing parties, while his opponent, Lojze Peterle, had the backing of the conservative ones.

There has been some concern that the leftist Mr. Türk will not be able to work well with a parliament controlled by conservative parties. The Prime Minister even speculated about resigning, rather than work with the new president. But cooler heads have prevailed and the country will now try its hand at embracing government by bi-partisanship. How's that been going in the US, by the way?

Death in Pakistan

Lastly, the most dramatic, and sad news of the month (if not year) was the December 27 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Ms. Bhutto was the two-time PM of Pakistan during the brief periods in which the Prime Minister was the highest office in the country (the Pakistani constitution has been amended to shreds, and they've changed from being under presidential rule to prime ministerial rule a couple of times). When she was first elected in 1988, it marked the first time ever that a woman had been placed in charge of a Muslim country.

Of course, Ms. Bhutto had the advantage of being the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the guy who ruled Pakistan for much of the 1970's before being overthrown and sentenced to death by one of Pakistan's many military governments. When he died, Ms. Bhutto became "leader for life" of his political party, and emerged as a critic of the military regime, eventually sweeping to power once the generals stood down and democratic elections were held.

As I cartooned about on my other site, history is sort of repeating itself now, but in the Marxian way, with the first time as tragedy, and the second time as a farce. The new leader-for-life of the Bhutto party is 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto, Ms. Bhutto's son. The young Mr. Bhutto is hardly ready for the role that history has thrust upon him, however, and he's too young to even legally hold elected office in Pakistan anyway. So his succession is largely symbolic, and it remains to be seen as to who the true "new Bhutto of Pakistan" will be.

2007-12-31T00:23:00.000-08:00

I don't do a lot of meta-posting on this blog, but I did happen upon an interesting site the other day I thought would be worth sharing.

Executed Today is a cool daily blog that is, as the name implies, all about executions. But what is quite interesting is his special section on past executions of heads of state, as well as his little chart on which current heads of state may be most at risk of getting executed someday.

Check it out if you are feeling morbid.

December!

2007-12-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well December is almost over, let's see what's happened so far.

DECEMBER- PART ONE

Belgium stumbles along blindly

Belgium has really been a strange case. Way back in June I reported that Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt lost his bid for re-election, with his liberal coalition being turfed in favor of a new conservative coalition headed by Yves Leterme. I, like most ignorant non-European types, expected Mr. Leterme to assume office as the new PM very shortly afterwards. How wrong I was.

Belgium, as I noted in my original post, is an enormously divided country, where people live in two distinct lingusitic communities, one Dutch, one French, that have very little to do with each other. These communities have very different interests, and as a result there are no "national" political parties in Belgium, only regional ones. The French socialists, the Dutch conservatives, etc.

Ordinarily, the like-minded politicians put aside their regional differences and form coalitions based on ideology. People expected Mr. Leterme, who is a Dutch conservative, to form an alliance with the French conservatives. But this hasn't happened, largely because the differences between the Belgium right have become inconsolable. The French right, who are the smaller group, want the Belgian federal government strengthened, to ensure they will continue to hold power over national policy. The Dutchies, however, favor just the opposite, and want the federal government to decentralize power to the regions, weakening national authority.

Mr. Leterme has spent the last six months trying to piece some sort of coalition together, but none of the parties, not even the non-conservatives, are willing to play ball. It's quite sad, really. Outside observers have wondered if all this turmoil spells "the end of Belgium," and will usher in a formal separation of the two language communities into two distinct countries. This idea has long been fairly mainstream in Belgium. It's actually surprisingly common for Belgians themselves to speak cynically about how "fake" or "artificial" their nation is. Everyone is aware that the country was only invented to stop France and Germany from invading each other, so it's sometimes hard to develop a true attachment to a nationality that has so obviously been manufactured.

The King of Belgium, Albert the Second, and the Parliament of Belgium have now both agreed to extend the term of Prime Minister Verhofstadt until March. By then, the hope is that the situation will finally be resolved, and a new government and Prime Minister will be able to take over. But do not hold your breath.

Loyalist installed in Togo

In the aftermath of his party's re-election, on December 3, President Faure Gnassingb of Togo promoted his minister of urban development, Mr. Komlan Mally, to Prime Minister. A largely unknown presidential loyalist, his appointment angered the opposition parties, who were naively expecting a more conciliatory nominee. Sour grapes, says the President, noting that if the opposition people wanted their guy to be president they should have won the majority of seats in the parliament.

Latvian leader resigns amid- what else- allegations!

Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis of Latvia resigned on December 5. In office since 2004, Kalvitis had recently become "embattled," which in media-speak means his friends-to-enemies ratio was getting more and more lopsided.

Kalvitis had become unpopular because he tried to fire the Latvian anti-corruption officer, who in turn said that firing the anti-corruption officer was a very corrupt thing to do. So Kalvitis ended up resigning after much acrimony and outrage, both from the opposition and within his own administration.

On December 20, the President of Lativa appointed former Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis to be Kalvitis' replacement. Godmanis, who last held office way back in 1990-1993, is a bit of a elder statesman in Latvia, having served as a key anti-Communist leader during the Soviet days. When Latvia left the USSR, he was appointed the first post-Soviet Prime Minister, though the country quickly spiraled into economic turmoil and he had to resign two years later. He never left politics, though, and continued to serve as a member of parliament and cabinet minister, including a job under Prime Minister Kalvitis.

Ukraine gets second chance at woman-rule

So there is this controversial Princess Leia-esque woman in the Ukraine named Yuliya Tymoshenko.

In the 90's, she was president of the biggest oil firm in the country, the United Energy Systems of Ukraine. She became one of the country's richest women, but according to her official biography on her website, her company was too successful for its own good. Apparently the greedy and jealous Ukranian government decided to sue her on trumped up charges, in order to get their grubby hands on her profits. Less biased sources say that Ms. Tymoshenko was a crooked businesswoman who was probably committing all sorts of crimes of her own— embezzling money, dodging taxes, giving kickbacks to her pals, that sort of thing.

But anyhow, according to her bio:

"The succession of events left only two choices for Yulia Tymoshenko: to stay in the big business and be engaged in confrontation with the state officials or to become a politician and fight for the independence of business from authority and for the state liberalization"

She chose the latter course, and became a conservative politician in the Ukrainian parliament, opposing the socialist, Russian-backed government of President Leonid Kuchma. When Kuchma resigned in 2004, his party and the Putin regime tried to engineer the election of Viktor Yanukovych with much corruption and shenanigans.

Outrage over this triggered a series of events known as the "Orange Revolution" which eventually culimated in the rejection of Mr. Yanukovych and the election of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who became president in 2005 despite nearly dying in a poisoning plot.

Shortly after taking office, President Yushchenko
appointed Ms. Tymoshenko as his prime minister. But clashes soon followed. Tymoshenko favors very hardline libertarian economic policies, and in power she pursued an aggressive agenda of privatization and cutbacks that divided the Orange coalition that had brought her to power. So the President fired her, and she turned against him, founding her own political party, which she of course named after herself, as she is quite a vain woman.

In this March's election, her party won a plurality of seats in the Ukranian parliament, and on December 18 she was formally elected Prime Minister by the parliament once again. PresidentYushchenko has agreed to work with her, but let's see if the feuds of the past resurface.

Nauru

The tiny island country of Nauru impeached their president on December 19.

I will admit that I knew very little about Nauru prior to this, other than it is a tiny tropical place somewhere in the South Pacific. But apparently they have a very whacko political culture over there.

Nauru was originally a German colony, then was administered by the Australians after the First World War, then it became a fully independent republic in 1968. This guy named HammerDeRoburt, who was the supreme chief of the island or whatever during the colonial days, became the first president.

Early on, President Hammer (fun name) established a convention that if he didn't get his own way, he would resign. And then when the parliament conceded to whatever issue he was pushing, they would agree to re-elect him. So Hammer resigned four times and was re-elected nine times, which doesn't add up mathematically I know, but you have to understand that sometimes he was just calling parliament's bluff.

Hammer died in 1992, and there were a bunch of new presidents after him, who all resigned and were re-elected a bunch of times. Sometimes they were also impeached, then re-elected. They've had around 30 presidential terms in 40 years as a result, though less than a dozen actual presidents.

This madness works because there are only 18 people in the Nauru parliament, which makes it about the same size as the student council at my university. In other countries, resignations and impeachments and things seem dramatic, but Nauru is so small such events are really just little petty games of personal vendettas and politicking.

Ludwig Scotty was elected president of Nauru in May of 2003. Four months later he was impeached, and Mr. Ren Harris was elected president for the fourth time in his political career (previous terms: 1999-2000, 2001-2003, and a different period of 2003). In June of 2004 President Harris was impeached again, and Ludwig Scotty became president for the second time.

Following President Scotty's (they have such fun names in that country) second impeachment on December 19, newcomer Marcus Stephen was elected to replace him. President Stephen has never been president before, so let us all hope that his career will be filled with many happy impeachments and re-elections.

What happened in November

2007-11-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a month since my last update, so I reckon its high time to summarize the events of the past month.

November 5- Donald Tusk is sworn in as Prime Minister of Poland, replacing one half of the Kaczynski brothers. Tusk is the leader of the moderate "Civic Platform" party, and pledged to course a moderate agenda. The first thing he did was put forth the moderate proposal to pull Polish pull troops out of Iraq, but keep them in Afghanistan.

November 7- The amusingly-named Prime Minister Miyeegombo Enkhbold of Mongolia resigned, after internal strife in his political party forced him out. This was not hugely relevant; the Mongolian political system is quite unstable, and Mongolian PMs rarely serve more than a year in office. On November 22 the parliament chose Sanj Bayar to be the new prime minister.

Both Mr. Enkhbold and Mr. Bayer are members of what used to be known as the Mongolian Communist Party. Their gang ruled the country from 1912 to the fall of Communism in the mid-1990's. But the party, survived, moderating itself into the modern "People's Revolutionary Party" which accepts democracy and the existence of a free-market economy. After an absence during the 90's, they were voted back into power in 2000.

November 13- Togo is a crooked little French country in Africa. From 1967 to 2005 it was ruled by the tyrannical Gnassingbe Eyadema, then when he died his untalented son Faure took over. This outraged the west, which said Africa should really stop doing this sort of thing. So the EU cut off aid.

Eager to regain legitimacy, President Faure called presidential elections, which he then won. He then began to talk to the opposition parties about holding a free and fair parliamentary election. In order to ensure these were conducted under unbiased eyes, he then picked an opposition politician named Yawovi Agboyibo to be his prime minister for the duration of the election.

The parliamentary election concluded on October 14, with the President's party winning 50 of the 81 seats. On November 13 Prime Minister Agboyibo resigned, saying his "job was done." It's kind of sad things didn't end in a more dramatic way. The President will now likely install some hack of his own in Agboyibo's place.

November 16- Things have been going cuckoo bananas in Pakistan recently, as I am sure you know. The hope I reported on earlier, that General Musharaff might enter into some sort of power-sharing dealie with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto seems to have been dashed in the wake of... well, the General's imposition of martial law and arrest of Ms. Bhutto.

General Musharaff chose to go medieval at precisely the worst possible opportunity, at a time when there was an enormous amount of pressure for him to finally embrace a transition to fully democratic rule. His imposition of martial law thus alienated his regime from many of his former backers, including the United States, so now Musharaff is scrambling to assure the world that, no really, I'm serious about the democracy stuff.

The General announced that parliamentary elections would be held in January, and in anticipation he appointed Muhammadmian Soomro the chairman of the Pakistani Senate to be his new, caretaker prime minister (or as they call the office in that country, "grand vizier") for the duration of the election period.

I am learning that this "appoint a special PM to supervise elections" is actually quite a common practice in third-world countries, where the public generally believes that incumbent politicians are too crooked to be trusted. Mr. Soomoro is a well-respected and independent guy, so let's hope he brings some much-needed legitimacy to Pakistani democracy.

November 23- Since 1998, the President of Lebanon has been Monsieur Emile LaHoud. He was very pro-Syria, and when he came to office he supported what was then the status quo, namely Syria's military occupation of his country, and the ensuring political subordination.

Then in the spring of 2005 there was the so-called Cedar Revolution in which thousands of anti-Syrian Lebanese protesters took to the streets to demonstrate. In the aftermath, Syria ended up withdrawing all her troops, LaHoud's prime minister resigned, and in the emergency elections that followed, anti-Syrian parties won 72 of the 128 of the seats in the legislature.

Everyone was happy, at first, but there were still outstanding problems to address. President LaHoud remained in office, and many of the anti-Syria parties in the parliament were members of Hizbollah, the fundamentalist terror group. Hizbollah hates Israel, and in the Summer of 2006 there was this odd and complicated war between Israel and the part of Lebanon that supports Hizbollah.

Anyhow... President LaHoud's term was set to end on November 23, and in the Lebanese political system it is the job of the parliament to chose a replacement. But since the parliament is polarized between fundies and moderates, they were unable to make a decision. The Hizbollah members often boycotted the election sessions, which prevented the parliament from obtaining quorum, and thus making a decision.

So on the morning of November 23 LaHoud left office, with no one to replace him. LaHoud declared that he was giving his powers to the armed forces, but Prime Minister Fuad Saniora contests this, and considers himself to be the "acitng president" in the absence of a proper one. This situation is obviously going to explode into a huge political crisis, so let's all watch eagerly.

November 28- Almazbek Atambayev, who we remember was appointed prime minister of the vowel-less republic of Kyrgyzstan last March, resigned today. The Associated Press says this was done in anticipation of the country's December elections.

Kyrgyzstan is ruled by a strong president who has become fairly unpopular recently. So he appointed Atambayev to be his PM. Atambayev is the leader of the opposition party, so this was supposed to show that the President is a great guy who unites everyone. But now the election is around the corner, so both men need to stop pretending to like each other.

John Howard, the lovable four-term Prime Minister of Australia was booted from office last week. He'd been in power since 1996. That was probably too long, because the Australians had grown tired of him.

Howard was a strong conservative, and was something of a godfather figure to conservative politicians in other countries, especially Canada and the United States. He loudly and unapologetically opposed things that were quite unfashionable to oppose, such as same-sex marriage, immigration, and the Kyoto Accord, while simultaneously embracing things that were supposed to be unpopular, such as the Iraq War, George W. Bush, and the British Monarchy. And he was enormously successful, defying a great deal of conventional wisdom in the process.

But the new conventional wisdom was that Howard was a fool to run for a fifth term in office, and this time, the pundits were right.

The fellow who beat Howard is Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd. Unlike Howard, Rudd was never a professional politician, and has in fact came quite late to electoral politics. For most of his adult life he was a bureaucrat of some sort, working behind the scenes in the foreign office, the state of Queensland, and then the national Labor Party.

Rudd will be the first left-wing PM in over a decade. Australia is a pretty conservative country overall. Since the war they've had about 40 years of rule by the conservative party (which is oddly actually called the "Liberal Party") compared to only 20 from the Labourites.

Weird Countries

2007-10-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of political and history books, but not a lot of fiction. But it doesn't matter, because reality is frequently much stranger than fiction anyway. When you study the politics of other countries you frequently come across stories that are so thoroughly bizarre they couldn't even pass as plots of a second-rate drug story paperback.

For example, imagine someone wrote a book in which a country was ruled by two identical twins, one of whom was president, while the other was prime minister. And they were both former movie stars. It sounds absurd, but that's the government of Poland I am describing, where two twin brothers, Lech Kaczynski and Jaroslaw Kaczynski controll both executive offices of the republic.

But not for much longer. Poland had parliamentary elections last week and the brothers' right-wing party was dealt a harsh blow. The moderate Civic Platform won 209 of 460 seats meaning they will now get to choose a new prime minister and undermine the powers of the president. It was an amusing era while it lasted.

Meanwhile, we have Argentina, where the president's wife was elected president yesterday. This hardly even seems like news. The entire Argentine political system is based around wives becoming president.

In the 1940's the country was ruled by Colonel Juan Peron, an extreme populist who had no coherent ideology other than giving "the people" (as defined by him) what they wanted. And the people liked him, largely because of his beautiful, shrewish wife Evita, who bossed him around behind the scenes. They made a musical about it, as I am sure you know.

Evita wanted to be president herself, so Juan tried to promote her to vice president so he could resign sometime down the line and let her take over. But she died of Cancer and the military overthrew him, so that plan never came to be.

Exiled in Spain for almost 20 years, Juan Peron met a nightclub dancer named Isabel and they married. Then the political tides began to turn in Argentina, and the political elites begged Juan to come back and be president again. By then it was 1973 and Peron was quite old, but he agreed anyway.

Desperate to reclaim his past success, Juan tried to present Isabel as the second-coming of Evita. But where Evita had been shrewd and intellectual, Isabel was ditzy and disinterested. She had absolutely no political experience and her interest in Argentina was little more than a natural outcome of being in the right place at the right time.

But Peron made her vice president regardless, and people went along with it. But then Peron died a year later, and Isabel became president, and the political and military elites began to second-guess turning a blind eye.

Isabel was overthrown after less than a year in office. It was a sad end to Latin America's first female president, and her downfall led to the rise of a very vicious right-wing military dictatorship that killed a lot of people and invaded the Falkland Islands, among other things.

In 1983 democracy returned to Argentina. The new presidents embraced radical free-market reforms in an effort to turn around the country's crumbling economy, which had been badly mismanaged by years of corruption and incompetence from the ruling juntas.

But for a number of reasons (look it up, I'm no economist) the reforms never really did what they were supposed to do. Unemployment, inflation, and corruption continued to thrive, reaching a peak in 2001 when angry Argentines took to the streets in protest over their worsening wages and increasingly worthless currency.

What happened next was sort of comically tragic. Sensing the president was likely to resign soon, the vice president resigned. Then, the president did. In accordance with the law of succession, the president of the senate then became acting president, but he resigned two days later. The Congress then appointed one of the state governors to be acting president, but that guy resigned as well after a week in office. The president of the senate then resigned again, in order to prevent becoming acting president again, and the presidency passed to the president of the House of Representatives. He resigned two days later, and the Congress appointed another governor to serve as acting prez. His name was Eduardo Duhalde, and he had the sanity to call for emergency elections.

In 2003 Duhalde lost, and Governor Nestor Kirchner was elected as Argentina's first non-acting president in several years. Kirchner was a fiery Peronist who wanted to return the country to the populist "third way" of the late president, and away from the free-market worship of his successors. During the last four years he's pursued an eclectic bunch of policies which have generally made him quite popular. He's been a strong proponent of persecuting former members of the military regime, and foreign policy wise he's taken a pretty consistently anti-American stance, that while not quite in Hugo Chavez land, has earned him a lot of the same praise from the left.

Kirchner surprised many when he announced he would not run for a second term. The nomination of the Peronist party he leads was instead given to his wife (and sitting senator) Cristina. Unlike Evita and Isabel, Cristina has been a successful politician in her own right. She's been in the game even longer than Nestor himself, in fact. The two are thus the ultimate power couple, with careers that feed off each other. Some pundits have even speculated that the two may be planning a "take turns" approach to the presidency, since Nestor could conceivably run for a non-consecutive second term in 2011 and then she again in 2015.

Would this sound believable if you read it in a romance novel?

Death in Burma

2007-10-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

So the Prime Minister of Burma died. But don't get excited, it's just a co-incidence. It doesn't actually affect the depressing situation in Burma in any major way.

So Burma was a British colony, right? Then in the 1960's, shortly after becoming independent the new government was overthrown by this Marxist lunatic named General Ne Win. He was the sort of Robert Mugabe of his time, destroying one of the richest economies of the region with poorly conceived Communist-style reforms. He was also famously eccentric and believed in magic spells and UFOs and that lot. But I'm sure you've never heard of him because he wasn't "US-backed" and for some reason those dictators have sort of fallen through the cracks of the popular imagination, as I noted when Mengistu Haile Mariam was found guilty of genocide earlier this year.

But yeah, General Ne stepped down in 1981 and his military junta reshuffled itself, bringing to power the generation of generals who are in charge today. General Than Shwe became the head of state, or as they call the office in Burma, "Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council." His new government undid a lot of Ne's Marxist reforms, and renamed the country from "the Socialist Republic of Burma" to "the Union of Myanmar," but kept oppression levels just as high.

In 1990, under heavy international pressure, his junta held its first-ever democratic election, to chose a new parliament and prime minister. Aung San Suu Kyi, the elegant daughter of Burma's somewhat overrated independence hero, was elected along with her National League for Democracy party. But of course the junta was having none of this; they had only done the stupid election in the first place because they naturally assumed that their party, which I assume was called the National League for Killing You Bastards While We Take Your Money, would win a landslide. So the election was invalidated and Ms. San Suu Kyi became the big international superstar she is today.

The guy who died was named Soe Win, a longtime member of the junta who was promoted to the office of Prime Minister in 2004, after the old PM was fired and jailed for being too moderate. The key sticking point was the matter of negotiation with Ms. San Suu Kyi. The moderate faction of the junta favors talks while the hardline faction, which includes General Shwe, does not.

Prime Minister Win suffered from some mysterious disease that was probably leukemia, and was hospitalized a few months ago. So he basically missed his chance to be part of the big crackdown-on-protesting-monks fiesta that has dominated international headlines.
His death in a Singapore hospital this week was not unexpected. It's interesting though, because his absence probably has made it a bit easier for the junta to compromise. General Shwe now says he will in fact meet with Ms. San Suu Kyi. He probably hopes to just shut her up for a few years, but that's still something.

2007-10-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Some interesting developments, let's plunge in.

Musharrafocracy

General Pervez Musharraf's grip over Pakistan has been slowly weakening over the last couple of months. People have been protesting his authoritarian rule more actively, and the demand for democratic reforms have been strong.

Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999. In doing so, he deposed a guy named Nawaz Sharif, who had been elected Prime Minister in 1997. Sharif in turn came to power after Ms. Benazir Bhutto, the old PM, was removed from office due to gross corruption. They were both exiled after the coup, and as General Musharraf became more unpopular, both began to plot a political comeback.

Mr. Sharif's plan seems to have been the more poorly thought out. Last month he flew back into the country, smug and secure that he'd be greeted as a returning hero. Instead, minutes after he stepped into the airport, guards arrested him and sent him on the first plane back out.

Ms. Bhutto, in contrast, has been engaged in high-level behind-the-scenes negotiations with General Musharraf. And if recent reports are to be believed, they have paid off.

The parliament of Pakistan today voted to extend Musharraf's term as president for another four years. Ms. Bhutto's faction in the parliament boycotted, but did not oppose the vote, and regarded the extension of the General's term as legitimate. Musharraf has in turn agreed to resign from the army, stop wearing a military uniform, and drop all outstanding corruption charges against Bhutto.

Bhutto will return to Pakistan soon, and will run for another term as Prime Minister in upcoming elections. Musharraf has agreed to share power with her, if she wins.

So everything seems to be all rosy and lovely for the time being. Perhaps a glorious shining democratic future is in the works.
Here's a fun fact about Pakistan, though. No leader in the entire history of that country has ever served a full term in office. Not one! They've all either been overthrown, killed, or impeached.

Putinocracy

I'll tell you one country that's not going to have a glorious democratic future, though- Russia!

Mr. Putin's term has expired, so he has to step down as president at the end of this year. Analysts were a bit flabbergasted that Putin was willing to go along with this. "Putin the tyrant respect term limits?" they said, "what madness is this!" I thought they were just being alarmist at first. Maybe Putin wasn't as autocratic as they say.

Then Putin appointed his friend, who no one had ever heard of, as Prime Minister a couple weeks ago. Okay, well that seemed a bit dodgy. It was obvious the new PM was being groomed to succeed Putin in the presidential election, just as Yeltsin had groomed Putin back when the latter was Prime Minister. But still, at least Putin was acknowledging that he wasn't going to be in power any more.

The conspiracy theorists finally got what they wanted this week, though. Putin was named leader of the "United Russia" political party, which dominates the Russian parliament. Putin then announced that he'd like to become Prime Minister again should a "decent, capable and modern person with whom I can work" be elected president and decide to appoint him. Hopefully you can fill in the rest of the blanks.

Boring formal updates

But it wasn't all cloak-and-dagger intrigue around the world. In the last few weeks there have been a couple mundane transfers of power.

The Republic of Mali, one of Africa's more stable and democratic countries had a parliamentary election in July in which the ruling party was turfed a new coalition was elected. The incumbent Prime Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maïga agreed to step down once the coalition got its stuff together. He officially resigned on September 27, and the next day the President appointed Mr. Modibo Sidibé as new PM. Sidbe is a longtime loyalist to Mali's popular head of state, President Amadou Toumani Toure. As is the case in most African nations, the Prime Minister of Mali is not a very strong or relevant office, and exists mostly to serve the president. Regardless, President Toure is now in a much stronger position having a loyalist in the PM's office and a sympathetic majority in the parliament.

The half-year terms of the two Captains of San Marino came to an end on October 1. The new captains are named Mirko Tomassoni and Alberto Selva. They shall hold office until April. I wrote about San Marino's kooky political system (and country) a few months ago. http://headofstateupdate.blogspot.com/2007/04/welcome-to-serene-republic-of-san.html

At first I thought the President of Serbia died last week, but it turns out only the President of the Serb Republic died. Serbia is a country, while the Serb Republic is just a province in the Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina. This is a subtle distinction which only political nerds like me would appreciate. Well, and the Serbian people, I guess.

Short, bespectacled gentleman placed in charge of Asian nation

2007-09-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

The Japanese got a new Prime Minister yesterday. Yasuo Fukuda was appointed leader of the ruling Liberal Party on Sunday, and was then officually confirmed to office by a vote of the parliament on Monday.

Fukuda was the longtime chief secretary of the cabinet under the fomrer Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, which is a very important job in the Japanese system. So his promotion was widely anticipated.

Other than that, uh... the news reports say he's a "moderate," and he was the son of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, who ruled for a couple years in the 1970's.

Sierra Leone

2007-09-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Not much in the news lately. It's been a slow couple of weeks. So I'll just ramble on a bit about Sierra Leone, a country I've been studying a bit recently.

They got a new president last Monday. Longtime opposition party leader Ernest Bai Koroma was sworn in a few weeks after he achieved a solid victory over the ruling party candidate.

Sierra Leone is a former British colony in Africa with a predictably turbulent and tragic political history.

The country achieved independence in 1961. Its first prime ministers were two brothers, Sir Milton Margai and Sir Albert Margai. Then in 1967, Sir Albert, the younger one, lost his bid for re-election to Siaka Stevens and his "All Peoples' Congress" Party. It was the first time in history that an African government had lost a bid for re-election. People hoped it would also be the first peaceful transition of power.

Sir Albert didn't want to give up power, though, so he asked the army to stage a coup to keep himself in office. But the army had plans of their own. They did the coup, but exiled Sir Albert.

A counter-coup later deposed the army, who has governed for about a year. The democratically-elected Mr. Stevens was installed to the office he had rightly earned.

But then Stevens turned into a tyrant. He removed Queen Elizabeth as head of state and made himself executive president, ending Sierra Leone's record as the longest-running black African country to remain under the British monarchy. He also banned all political parties and suppressed most civil liberties. Not a particularly violent regime, though, which by Sierra Leone's low standards means Mr. Stevens is now remembered as a gentle statesman.

Stevens resigned in 1986 and his vice president replaced him. In 1992, just as the country was starting to liberalize, the new guy was overthrown by the military, and once again a junta government came to power.

The new military regime lasted much longer than the first one, from 1992 to 1996. The presidency was abolished and all power was concentrated in the hands of a "Council of State" headed by Captain Valentine Strasser.

As the years went on, the nation spiraled into death, turmoil, and civil war. The military regime was incredibly harsh, and backed roaming militias who kept the citizenry in line with random kidnappings, torture, and public executions. Charles Taylor, the kleptocratic dictator of next-door Liberia, made things worse by funding a terrorist group known as the Revolutionary United Front in an attempt to destabilize the regime for his own power interests. The RUF was well-known for recruiting child soldiers, which earned the scorn of much of the world.

In 1996 Captain Strasser was overthrown by a more moderate captain named Julius Bio, who announced a return to democracy. Free elections were held, and the newly-elected civilian president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah quickly moved to sign a peace treaty with the RUF, and end the fighting.

But then, sigh, President Kabbah was overthrown a few months later by rebel officer Major Johnny-Paul Koroma, who was a supporter of the RUF. He tried to bring back military rule, but by now much of the world had tuned into Sierra Leone's plight. The UN security council and most African states in the region slapped harsh sanctions on his regime and refused to recognize it. Defeated, Johnny-Paul soon agreed to step down and restore President Kabbah.

Tony Blair then deployed 1,500 British troops to Sierra Leone to defend Kabbah and the capital city from further rebel insurrections. The Brits in turn trained the police and a restructured army, purged of trouble-makers. For this, Mr. Blair is much beloved in the country.

The restored Mr. Kabbah remained in power until this month, when elections were held to pick his successor. Though far more legitimate than the military kooks before him, Kabbah was generally regarded as corrupt and incompetent—not the strong leader many had hoped for. So now we have Mr. Koroma in power, and he promises to do things differently.

We'll see... we'll see.

Prime Ministers Wrap-up

2007-09-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

Heir Made Apparent

President Putin of Russia fired his Prime Minister today. Mikhail Fradkov had been in power since 2004, but will now be replaced by Victor Zubkov (seen on the right), the obscure director of some sort of anti-corruption department. The move has been analyzed as Putin's last-minute attempt to groom an hier. Presidential elections are scheduled for this coming March, but Putin has so far declined to endorse any of the declared candidates.

The Prime Minister's office is a natural stepping stone to the presidency. If Mr. Putin resigns before his term ends, Prime Minister Zubkov will automatically become president. Being the incumbent president as well as Mr. Putin's choice will make him virtually unbeatable in a popular election. Putin, a former prime minster, was himself catapulted to power through the exact same process, back when Boris Yeltsin resigned prematurely in 1999.

No one really knows who Mr. Zubkov is, which will likely have all the world's intelligence departments scrambling to do research in the next couple of days. The main thing we know is that he's a loyal friend of Putin's from way back, which brings with it obvious conclusions.

The Russian Prime Ministership is not a strong post, and the men who hold the office are appointed by the president to help guide his legislative agenda through the parliament. Rather akin to the Prime Minister of France. Putin was much better at managing his PMs than Boris Yeltsin. In his 1999 to 2007 term, Mr. Zubkov will be only Putin's fourth. Mr. Yeltsin went through nine, including a botched attempt to appoint himself PM.

Japan Resumes Proud Tradition of Instability

Junichiro Koizumi was Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. He was popular and charismatic, and was re-elected a couple of times, staying in power for a total of five-and-a-half years. The longest-serving Prime Minister since Eisaku Sato, who ruled for seven years from 1964 to 1972.

The cutthroat nature of Japanese party politics, coupled with the culturally-ingrained Japanese impulse to resign whenever anything goes wrong, has ensured that Japanese PMs tend to have very brief shelf lives, as I have chronicled on this chart here: http://www.filibustercartoons.com/japan.htm

As you can see, there have been 25 in all since 1948, with 10 of those serving a year or less.

When Koizumi resigned last year, the all-powerful and always-in-power Japanese Liberal Party appointed cabinet minister Shinzo Abe to replace him.

Japanese prime ministers are not extremely powerful figures- a deliberate result of Japan's anti-authoritarian post-war constitution. More than anything else, they act as a voice and a face for the government-of-the-day. That's why Koizumi-san was so popular, he was a great communicator and a lovable man.

True power in Japan lies with the party bosses. Even though the Liberals have been in power more or less continually for the last five decades, their vast party is a mess of competing factions and interests, and any PM has to walk a delicate line to appease them all. They all make their conflicting demands, and the prime minister can either formulate some compromise, or get non-confidence voted out of power and give someone else a shot.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago there were elections for the Japanese Senate, and the Japanese Liberal Party lost its majority there in a stunning upset. This was of course shameful for Abe-san, so people called on him to resign.

And yesterday he announced that he would. Almost exactly one year in power. The Liberals will now have to scramble and find someone else for the job, though when precisely the transition will take place is not currently known.

Other Prime Minister Dies

A while ago I mentioned that John Compton, the Prime Minister of Saint Luca, had a stroke, and was incapacitated. Well he sadly passed away earlier this week. The Governor-General promoted Stephenson King, who had been running the small Caribbean county as acting prime minister since May, to full prime minister.

Who's running Bangladesh Part II

2007-09-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Things have really gone to pot in Bangladesh since I last covered the affairs in that country back in January.

To summarize quickly, Bangladesh has a quirk in their constitution where the prime minister is supposed to resign immediately before elections to make way for an interim PM, who is in turn supposed to preside over the government during the election cycle and thus prevent corruption.

After much in-fighting, Fakhruddin Ahmed was eventually appointed interim PM. He was a distinguished technocrat who was supposed to provide calm, neutral governance so elections could be held. But unfortunately he's turned into a bit of a tyrant over the last few months.

Although to be fair the country he inherited was hardly stable. Following the political breakdown that resulted in his appointment, Bangladesh was crippled with partisan strikes and political riots. Everyone was accusing each other of corruption, and the looming election looked like it was destined to be a violent nightmare.

Ahmed declared a state of emergency shortly after taking power, and the army pledged loyalty to him. Partisan activities were banned, and the leaders of both major political parties were arrested, as were numerous student activists and other political agitators. And of course the elections were cancelled, which in turn meant parliament was suspended indefinitely.

The president of Bangladesh, Iajuddin Ahmed (no relation), has been rather sidelined during all of this. But now he's in the news because his term was scheduled to end on Wednesday. In the Bangladeshi system the president is elected by parliament, but since there's no parliament, there can be no election. So President Ahmed said "fine, I'll just hang around then."

The interim Prime Minister says he still plans to hold elections before 2008, but the clock is rapidly ticking. And with everyone and everything of political relevance either banned or in jail, it's hard to see how the country is in any sort of shape for a democratic exercise.

The interim Prime Minister and his army backers.

Jamaica, land we love

2007-09-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of months I've often made particular notice of women leaders coming to power. But of course coming to power is only one side of the equation. Being kicked out of power is all part of the equality game, too!

Just ask Mrs. Portia Simpson-Miller, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, who was booted from office in an election yesterday.

Jamaica, many people are surprised to learn, used to have white Prime Ministers until very recently. See, check out this gallery (click to enlarge):

Mr. Patterson was the first black PM, and ruled the longest as well, from 1992 to 2006. When he resigned, his political party, the People's National Party, appointed Ms. Simpson-Miller, a longtime cabinet minister, to replace him as leader of the PNP, and thus automatically PM as well.

The new female PM was initially popular, but her party has been power for such a long time that people are starting to get sick of it. The election results now say that the PNP and Ms. Simpson-Miller have very narrowly gone down to defeat. The PNP only won 28 seats in the 60-seat parliament, while the opposition party, Labour, won 32.

The leader of the Labour Party will now become Prime Minister, in conjunction with the British parliamentary protocol Jamaica follows. His name is Bruce Golding and he's been in the political scene for a while now. Jamaica, much like the United States, has a rather rigid two-party system. Mr. Golding is perhaps best known for trying to found a third party to break the deadlock. But that failed, of course, so in 2005 he decided to just take over the Labour Party and became its new leader (the first black to lead that party too, I should note).

He remains a reformist at heart, though, and during the election he promised to make all sorts of dramatic revisions to the Jamaican parliamentary system in order to make it more accountable and democratic. As a fan of parliamentary reform, I am keen to see how well he is able to make out.

The New Face of Turkey

2007-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Abdullah Gül was elected President of Turkey this week, thus finally concluding the most drawn-out and controversial presidential election in modern Turkish history.

I wrote about the controversial Mr. Gül earlier this year during his first attempt to run for president. A former Islamist, many within Turkey's secular elite found him too religious to be ruler of a republic that prides itself on strongly separating church from state.

Just to recap, in April the parliament elected Mr. Gül president, but that vote was later deemed invalid due to lack of quorum. So things were delayed for a couple of months, and Mr. Gül said he wouldn't run again, to spare the nation any more turmoil.

But then in July the Turks had a parliamentary election, and the religious Justice and Development Party won a divisive majority. This emboldened them, as it meant they no longer had to worry about appeasing the other, smaller parties and their whiny calls to respect secularism. So they decided to renominate Mr. Gül and on August 28 they pushed through his election, which he won in a landslide vote of 339 to 83.

The Turkish president is sworn in on the same day of his election, so Mr. Gül formally became Turkey's 11th president later that evening.

In old Turkey the military probably would be staging a coup right about now, because Mr. Gül, despite being a born-again secularist and enemy of Islamism, is still considered to be too much of a socially conservative busy-body to be trusted with power. But new Turkey is trying to get into the EU, and in the battle between democracy and secularism democracy is a value much less easily compromised. Considering the parliament's- and by extension the voters- overwhelming endorsement of Gül, a coup at this point would do far more damage to Turkey's international image and prestige than any religious agenda the new president will be able to cook up.

The military knows this, but old habits die hard, and following Mr. Gül's election they still made some official noises of displeasure. The Chief of the Army staff declared that "centers of evil" were working to erode secularism, and all of the country's top generals boycotted their new Commander-in-Chief's inauguration ceremony.

Sunrise, Sunset

2007-08-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Virgin Matures

Part of the reason why the British Empire was so successful was thanks to the naturally efficient tendencies of the British people. They organized their empire better than most people organize their socks, with elaborate categories and columns and hierarchies and bureaucracies.

There is no British Empire today of course, but the British still have a collection of things called "overseas territories" which they sort of colonially-run. The surviving relics of the Empire, as it were. There's about a dozen of them today, and they're all little islands with tiny populations. Government-wise, they have different systems depending on what stage of colonial "evolution" they're at.

The smaller colonies have strong governors, appointed by the British government, who hold almost all political power. As the colony matures and grows, it eventually gets an elected parliament, and the governor delegates some of his powers to the legislature. As it matures further, the parliament gets larger and more sophisticated, and chooses its own chief minister and cabinet to assist the governor in day-to-day operations. And then, in the final step before independence, the chief minister becomes a prime minister, and the governor becomes a mostly symbolic figure, who is barely involved in government at all.

I mention all this because one of Britain's more famous colonies recently upgraded its status. On August 20 the British Virgin Islands formally entered the final phase of colonial evolution, and new elections were held. Longtime politician Ralph O'Neal was in turn elected the nation's first Prime Minister.

The Virgin Islands joins Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands as territories of Britain that are virtually independent. Certainly more independent than Canada was in the early 20th Century, if you want to use that analogy. It remains to be seen whether or not any of these nations will ever become fully independent countries, however. The Bermuda people routinely vote against independence, in part because they benefit from the various tax breaks and passport loopholes that come with being colonial citizens. The Puerto Ricans have been pulling the same scam for decades.

Rest in Peace

And now, a rather sad collection of deaths to report.

Gaston Thorn died yesterday, he was the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg and one of that country's great statesmen. He was PM for five years, from '74 to '79. After leaving office he became head of the European Commission, and was one of the founding fathers of the modern EU system.

Raymond Barre passed away on the 25th, he was the Prime Minister of France from 1976 to 1981, serving between Jacque Chirac's two terms. A conservative economist, he was one of the first western leaders to advocate the kind of harsh right-wing economic reforms that would become so fashionable in the 1980's.

Perhaps most notable of all was the August 24 death of Abdul Rahman Arif. Arif was President of Iraq from 1966 to 1968. His term ended when he was overthrown by the Baath Party, who proceded to establish a dictatorship under President Ahmad Hassan al Baker and Vice President Saddam Hussein.

Arif was the brother of the first President of Iraq, Abdul Salam Arif, who was part of the gang that overthrew the Iraqi monarchy in the late 1950's. When the elder Arif was killed in a helicopter crash, the younger assumed the presidency of the nation. And the Iraqi people cheered, because this kind of thing clearly illustrated how a dictatorship was superior to a monarchy.

Dubious Man Elected Through Dubious Process

2007-08-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Some readers have noted I failed to make any comments regarding the new President of Latvia, who took office while I was away, on July 8. Well it's over a month now, but in the interests of completeness I will say a few words about him.

Dr. Valdis Zatlers is his name. He achieved a narrow first-round victory in a parliamentary vote held on May 31, beating former supreme court justice Aivars Endzins.

The election was one of the most contentious in Latvia's democratic history, reflecting the fact that the once-symbolic presidency has become a more powerful and important office in recent years. Both candidates were controversial for different reasons. Endzins was a former Communist who was on record defending the Soviet occupation of his country, which needless to say rubbed some people the wrong way. But at least he had political experience, which was more than could be said of Dr. Zatlers, who although an accomplished physician, never held any sort of elected or appointed office of government.

Zalter's election was also controversial because many Latvians have grown to dislike the rather old-fashioned and unaccountable way in which their presidents are elected. Dr. Zatlers was, by all accounts, the less popular candidate with the general public, but that fact didn't matter since the general public doesn't get to elect their president directly. Zatler was parliament's choice, but that's not necessarily a good thing, as many Latvians hold their parliament in rather low regard.

But now he's in office. It remains to be seen whether he will be a dynamic and strong president like his predecessor, the popular Vaira Vike-Freiberga, or merely a puppet of the country's oligarchical elites, as many of his opponents fear.

Here's a fine Latvian-written editorial on the new fellow and the controversies surrounding him:

Three Stories of July

2007-08-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

So, I've been gone for a while eh? Let's recap what has transpired in the last month.

STORY NUMBER ONE

India has a new president! And a woman at that.

India is one of many countries where the president is a useless figurehead. But the election process is probably one of the most complicated political procedures in the world, a fact due to the sheer size of India. The winning candidate must secure a majority of votes by the Indian parliament and all 28 of India's state legislatures. That's over 4,000 politicians to win over. Luckily the country has a very rigid party hierarchy, so legislators generally vote the way their leaders tell them.

Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the majority Indian Congress Party and the most powerful politician in the country, decided that her country needed a woman president. Perhaps she was just bitter because she didn't get to be Prime Minister back in 2004, even though she won the friggin election. So anyway, as leader of the country's most dominant political party, Ms. Gandhi nominated her pal Pratibha Patil to be the new president of India. Ms. Patil was the Governor of Rajasthan, India's largest state, and a loyal party hack. On July 21 she won the vote handily, with 2,931 votes, or around 65%.

Governor Patil was sworn in four days later, on the 25th. Even though the Indian presidency is not powerful, the Indian people take the symbolism of the office seriously, so it was something of a big deal to finally have a woman president. In the past they have had Muslim and Sikh presidents, as well as a president from the much-hated "untouchables" caste.

Here's a picture of the new president performing one of her typical roles:

STORY NUMBER TWO

Another historic first occurred for women in the Commonwealth of Antigua and Barbuda. In early July the Prime Minister appointed Louise Lake-Tack as the country's first female Governor-General.

Ms. Lake-Tack was a longtime lawyer and low-level judge who worked in both A&B and England. But she was never a particularly famous or important figure in either country. She was however, a loyal supporter and fundraiser of the political party of the current Antiguan Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer. So Spencer appointed her Governor-General, much to the outrage of the opposition parties, who accused Spenny of using the nation's highest post as a shallow patronage appointment. All the opposition politicians refused to attend the inauguration ceremony in protest.

Counting Ms. Lake-Tack, Antigua and Barbuda has had three governor-generals in all, since the country became independent from the UK in 1981. The last colonial governor, Sir Wilfred E. Jacobs, served in the new position for 12 years. Then from 1993 to 2007 the post was held by Sir James Carlisle, a famous dentist. In small countries it is sometimes hard to scrounge up famous people.

STORY NUMBER THREE

Bhutan is a fundamentalist Bhuddist monarchy located between India and China. They tend to be a very self-aggrandizing lot, and often make the Dinseyesque claim of being "the happiest country on Earth." But the happiest place on Earth has a rather authoritarian system of government, under all-powerful king and no voting.

But things are slowly starting to change. Last year the longtime king resigned, and his 27-year-old son took the throne, supposedly to usher in a new era of more enlightened leadership. The new king proceeded to call for the country's first elections, which are scheduled to occur in March of '09.

In preparation for this historic event, Khandu Wangchuk, the royal Prime Minister resigned on July 31. He was replaced by Kinzang Dorji, who will serve as acting PM until a new one can be elected in March. Mr. Wangchuck hopes to run in the race, but thinks it would be a conflict if he stays in office during the election. So we shall see how things go.

***

So yeah. Those were the three most relevant things that happened while I was gone, head of state wise. Stay tuned for the resumption of regular updates!

2007-07-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

Just so you know, I have gone to Europe for the next month or so, to live amongst the Europeans and try to understand their far-out and frankly wrong way of life. With all the traffic signs and noodles with cheese and the rest. So see you when I return!

Un-elected Leaders Assume Office

2007-07-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

Israel's Presidential Saga Ends

The President of Israel resigned yesterday, which is a bit surprising considering that he only had 14 days left in his term of office. President Katsav has been battling lawyers for the last couple of months over sexual harassment suits with several women. It brought great disgrace to the presidency, but Katsav was afraid to resign, lest he open himself up to formal persecution. After the parliament failed to impeach him, he "temporarily" delegated his presidential powers to the speaker of the parliament, Ms. Dalia Itzik, in late January of 07. Since then, President Katsav has not been seen or heard of much, and was expected to quietly ride his term into the sunset.

But no, he has now evidently resigned as part of a plea bargain with his accusers. According to the Associated Press:

Under [the plea bargain] Mr. Katsav agreed to step down and plead guilty to charges of sexual harassment, indecent acts and harassment of a witness. He will pay damages to the complainants but he will not serve any time in prison.

I still don't entirely understand why the resignation was necessary this late in the game, but oh well. Acting President Itzik is now just plain ol' President Itzik, and is now officially the first female president of Israel, full stop.

Here's a nice picture of Israel's leaders. On the left we see Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then in the centre we see President Itzki kissing Shimon Peres, the man who will replace her as president in two weeks.

New Nanny Appointed

The Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina is a country that was was created by the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 to stop everyone in the former Yugoslavia from killing each other. Their constitution is an extraordinarily elaborate maze of institutions designed to equally appease each ethnic group in the federation. Instead of one president, for example, they have three, so no one group is favored more than the other.

Anyway, B-and-H's sovereignty is not absolute. Since the country was established it has been actively supervised by the United Nations via something called the "Peace Implementation Council," which basically meddles in the country's politics as it sees fit, in order to ensure the terms of the Dayton Accord are honored. The Supreme Head of the Peace Council is the High Representative, who is appointed by the UN Security Council. The High Representative can fire anyone he likes, even the presidents if they are deemed to be acting improperly.

Since 2006 the High Representative of B-and-H has been Herr Christian Schwarz-Schilling, a former German cabinet minister. There was hope he'd be the last one ever, since the international community is getting tired of playing nanny. But no, the Bosnia-and-Hercegovinan politicians have failed to make some of the necessary reforms the Peace Council has been recommending, so more supervision is required until they finally do.

Today Miroslav Lajcak became the new High Representative. He's a former ambassador and bureaucrat from the Republic of Slovakia. Let's see if he'll be the last one.

Here's Mr. Lajack shaking hands with Herr Schwartz-Schilling. The flamboyant one is the German.

New Chiefs

2007-06-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Brown. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Let's all get used to saying those phrases, since as of yesterday the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Right Honorable J. Gordon Brown.

There's no formal or public inauguration ceremony in the UK. The transfer of power is actually quite informal.

Prime Minister Blair woke up, and went to parliament. There was one final session of "question period" where the members were able to ask him some departing questions. When that ended, he was then driven over to Buckingham palace, where he met with Queen Elizabeth, and informed her that he was resigning the office of Prime Minister, effective immediately. Now a private citizen, Blair left the place and went to his summer cottage in the British countryside.

The Queen then phoned Gordon Brown, who has been leader of the Labour Party (which holds the majority of seats in the parliament) for the last little while. She asked him to come to the palace, and he complied. Meeting him in the throne room, the Queen told Brown that based on his leadership role in the parliament she was officially appointing him Prime Minister. And thusly it was set.

Queen Elizabeth has participated in this secretive ceremony 11 times since she came to the throne in 1952.

And the rest...

Mr. Brown's ascension (or rather Mr. Blair's departure- who knows how long Mr. Brown will rule for) will obviously go down as one of the most important stories of the year. But other people were coming to power too! We can't forget them!

Like Tuiatua Tupua Tamasese Efi, who became the Supreme Chief of the Islands of Samoa on June 20. A respected statesman and career politician of over four decades, he was elected unanimously by parliament.

Mr. Efi is the son of Tupua Tamasese Mea'ole, a man who very briefly served as Samoa's joint Head of State before dying in office in 1962, leaving the recently departed Chief Malietoa Tanumafili the Second to rule alone until his death in 2007.

Mr. Efi also served as Prime Minister from 1976 to 1982. Though he comes from an elite tribal family, Efi will be the first republican ruler of Samoa. Following Chief Malietoa's death, the country ceased to be a monarchy and the job of Supreme Chief became an elected position. Mr. Efi will serve a five year term, ruling in a largely symbolic capacity until 2012.

Palestine and Peru

2007-06-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

Coup in Palestine

It was coup against coup this week in the Territories of Palestine. Or something.

The Palestinian lands are governed as a constitutional republic, with a strong president and a prime minister chosen from an elected legislature. It used to be a one-man show under the late Mr. Arafat, but the western powers pressured him to liberalize, and thus a democratic constitution was cobbled together.

But the democracy backfired rather spectacularly last year, as we all know. The Hamas party, which is an openly terrorist organization that vows to wage perpetual war against the filthy Jew, was elected to a majority in the Palestinian parliament. President Mahmood Abbas was thus forced to honor the will of the voters, and appointed Hamas leader Ismail Haniya as prime minister.

But Palestinian politics is not terribly sophisticated, and bi-partisan cohabitation between executive and legislative branches was not embraced as... maturely as we may have hoped.

Earlier this week Hamas thugs took control of the President's office in the Gaza Strip and filed through his belongings in a comical manner. The President himself fled to the West Bank, and on June 14 he announced that Prime Minister Haniya was being fired for insubordination. Abbas also dissolved parliament and declared martial law, with himself henceforth ruling by decree. The next day he hastily appointed Salam Fayyad as the new PM. Mr. Fayyad is an American-educated diplomat who had previously been finance minister in the Hamas government, even though he himself was not a member of the party.

But Haniya has not accepted his firing. According to a Hamas spokesman:

“Lawfully, the Haniya government is still the legal Palestinian government, and it will continue its activities in all areas and will remain in power until the formation of a new government by the Palestinian legislative assembly.”

So now we have a good old fashioned case of feuding regimes! President Abbas is stuck in the West Bank and Haniya is stuck in the Gaza Strip, but both claim to be the sole ruler of all of Palestine. Of course this kind of thing tends to happen in any politically polarized nation where the nation's territories are so ridiculously geographically divided, as we see on this map:

If trends continue we might end up with two Palestines. A house divided against itself cannot stand, someone once said.

Fujimori back in the news

Now here's an interesting story.

The most successful immigrant politician in world history is probably Alberto Fujimori. His parents were both immigrants from Japan who immigrated to Peru in the 1930's. Despite being a racial minority, Alberto became a very successful politician, and in 1990 was elected President. But he was crooked and wicked and ruled as a tyrant.

In 2000 there was a crooked election, which Fujimori claimed to win, but the public rejected. There were big protests, and Fujimori fled Peru and went to Japan, faxing his resignation to the Congress from Tokyo.

Fujimori never returned to Peru, largely in order to escape legal persecution for various crimes committed during his time in office. Now, apparently, he wants to run for a seat in the Japanese Senate.

I would be cautious if I was the Japanese.

Elections and Deaths

2007-06-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

First Israel

You may recall my coverage of the tribulations of the former President of Israel, Mr. Moshe Katzav. Plagued by scandal, Mr. Katzav stepped into a permanent state of suspension from his political duties, which led to the rise of Ms. Dalia Itzik as Israeli's first female president (albeit an "acting" one).

Well the Katzav/Itzik term is coming to a close now, which means a successor needed to be chosen. And chose they did. Yesterday the Israeli parliament voted 86 to 34 to make Shimon Peres the next president.

The 83-year-old Mr. Peres is the longest-serving politician in Israeli history, and one of the most famous and successful as well. He has served in virtually every job of note over the last four decades. His resume is as follows:

Member of Parliament- 1959-present
Absorption Minister- 1969-1970
Transportation Minister- 1970-1972
Information Minister- 1972-1974
Defense Minister- 1974-1977
Acting Prime Minister- 1977
Interior Minister- 1984
Prime Minister- 1984-1986
Foreign Minister- 1986-1988
Finance Minister- 1988-1990
Foreign Minister- (second time) 1992-1995
Prime Minister- (second time) 1995-1996
Defense Minister- (second time) 1995-1996
Regional Development Minister- 1999-2000
Foreign Minister- (third time) 2000-2002
Vice Prime Minister- 2006-2007

Despite this impressive track record, Mr. Peres has something of a reputation as a political loser in Israel. He succeeded to the office of Prime Minister on three separate occasions, following resignations or assassinations of incumbents. But every single time he got the job he ended up being thrown out shortly after by voters, once the time came to run for re-election. In the year 2000 he similarly attempted to run for the Israeli presidency, but lost to Mr. Katsav, in a defeat that marked the first time a left-winger had lost the vote in decades.

But now Mr. Peres has finally won vindication, and his first-ever national mandate. He will take office on July 15.

Peres' ascension to the Israeli presidency means that the world will now have three Nobel Peace Prize winners serving as heads of state. Mr. Peres won the prize in 1994 along with with (cough) Yasser Arafat for negotiating the Olso Accords. Who are the other two? Read this post.

Second Belgium

Guy Verhofstadt has tenured his resignation as Prime Minister of Belgium. The move came, according to the Associated Press "one day after a general election in which conservatives — led by Christian Democrats — dealt his Socialist-Liberal coalition a stunning defeat."

Belgium is a very complicated country, politically speaking. Two years ago I went there and visited their parliament and collected lots of free brochures explaining how their system works.

The country is basically two countries in one, a French region and a Dutch region. The terms the Belgians use to describe these regions and their people can be confusing, since they rarely use the terms "French" and "Dutch." Here is the guide:

And here is what the country looks like, when divided ethnically:

These two regions are very independent from each other, making the idea of a "pan-Belgian" national identity or national interest a source of much debate. Politically, Belgian voters elect parties that represent both their ethnic community and their political ideology, but never simply the latter. So there is a French conservative party, a Dutch conservative party, a French socialist party, a Dutch socialist party, etc etc. Over eight parties in the parliament in all, at any given time.

King Albert the Second is the constitutional monarch of the country, and following an election he formally appoints a politician to negotiate a coalition government from among the mess of political parties. They say the likeliest coalition at this point will be a conservative-liberal alliance between the parliament's centrist and right-wing parties. The government will in turn be likely headed by the happy man on the right, Mr. Yves Leterme, leader of the conservative-Dutch party. The Dutch part of Belgium is bigger, so for the last three decades the PM has always been Flemish.

One must morn the defeat of Prime Minister Verhofstadt, though, if for no other reason than it means we will no longer be able to enjoy his delightfully quirky "Guy 4 Kids" page, which features cartoons of the Prime Minister as an anthropomorphic rabbit- http://www.guy4kids.be

Only Half-Decent President in Somali History Dies

Somalia clearly has been, with all due respect, a bullet-riddled hellhole for quite some time now. But there was a time- a very brief time- when it was a semi-livable place.

Adan Abdulle Osman was a nationalist politician when Somalia was still ruled by the British and Italians. He lobbied hard for independence, and when that day came in 1960 he was elected as independent Somalia's first president. He was a Marxist, however, and tried to push Somalia down a course of closer relations with the Communist world. Despite the fact, Osman remained a democrat. In 1967 he ran for re-election but lost to the pro-western candidate, Abdirashid Ali Shermarke. Osman stepped down gracefully in defeat, something very, very few African leaders of that era were ever willing to do. Two years into Mr. Shermake's presidency a rebellious Marxist general named Siad Barre staged a coup, and it's been downhill since then.

Osman lived in Somalia for the remainder of his life, eventually emerging as a critic of the Barre regime, a crime for which he would be imprisoned until the dictator's death in 1995.

Osman himself died on the eighth, at 99 years old. Whether or not people agreed with his politics, it was hard not to look on his presidency as a time of stability, pride, and optimism for the country and its future. Adjectives which have been in short supply ever since.

Austrian Nazi Statesman / UN Bureuacrat Dies As Well

Also dying this week as Kurt Waldheim, one of the most controversial political figures of the 20th Century. I'll just summarize his life.

Kurt was an Austrian, born in 1918. In 1938 his country was annexed by Nazi Germany, to the delight of most Austrians. As a young patriot, Waldheim joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party, then was drafted into the German Army.

Waldheim rose to the rank of ordnance officer and served under the infamous General Alexander Lohr, who led the Nazi campaign of terror in Yugoslavia. Several thousand Balkan Jews were deported to death camps during this period of German occupation.

When the war ended Waldheim tried to distance himself from his Nazi past in order to help his political career. When the matter was brought up, he began a policy of lying, and claimed that he was never in Yugoslavia, having dropped out of the army in 1941.

The post-war Austrian government gave him a string of diplomatic jobs, including Ambassador to Canada. In the 1960's he was elected to the Austrian parliament as a conservative, and in 1968 the chancellor appointed him minister of foreign affairs. He served the position with distinction, then resigned in 1970 to run for President. He lost, but then shortly after he put his name forth to run for Secretary General of the United Nations.

Waldheim was elected as UN Chief in 1971 and served until 1981, at which point his bid for a third-term was vetoed by the Chinese government who wanted a non-western Secretary General.

Kurt returned to Austrian politics after leaving the UN. He ran for president again in 1986 and won. By this time, however, people were starting to get more and more suspicious about Mr. Waldheim's personal history. He released his memoirs in 1980, "The Challenge of Peace," but a lot of people who knew him as a young man began to come forward and claim that some parts of his autobiography were clearly dishonest, particularly anything about his role in the Nazi military. It became a big media scandal.

The Austrian government eventually established a commission to investigate the President's Nazi past, and in 1988 they concluded that Waldheim clearly had been in Yugoslavia during the war, and almost certainly knew about the atrocities that were being committed under General Lohr. There was no evidence that the President himself was a war criminal, however.

This controversy gained world-wide attention, and many countries were deeply embarrassed for having supported or defended Mr. Waldheim during his tenure at the United Nations. During his presidency Austia was largely shunned by much of the world, and he was never invited to any summits or state visits. Except in the Arab world, where he was popular. Take that as you will.

Waldheim left the presidency in 1992, and spent the rest of his life trying to apologize and clarify. He was a complicated figure, and much of his life will forever remain a mystery now that he's dead. His life brought forth a number of debates about guilt, historical guilt, and especially guilt-by-association. He was never an evil man, but his attempts to do good were always haunted by a past he could not escape, no matter how hard he tried.

There is a series of popular Christian novels called "Left Behind" in which an ambitious Austrian politician rises through the ranks to become President of Earth, and is then revealed to be the anti-Christ. He is clearly based on Waldheim.

Prime Ministers Round-up

2007-06-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

Time for another edition of "Prime Ministers Round-up" where we look at the various inconsequential men who have recently become powerless prime ministers of their nations.

Prime Minister Paramanga Ernest Yonli of the Republic of Burkina Faso resigned on June 3. The move came a day after parliamentary elections in that country dealt a blow to his party's standings, and increased the standings of the ruling "Democracy and Progress" party. I am not sure how Mr. Yonli became Prime Minister in the first place, but he'd been in power since 2000.

On June 4 the longer-reigning President of Burkina Faso appointed the nation's Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Tertius Zongo, as the new prime minister. According to the Associated Press:

The decree appointing Zongo as prime minister, read on national television, provided no further information.

On June 7 Seyni Oumarou became Prime Minister of Niger. The old Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, was impeached by a non-confidence motion in the parliament on August 31. Mr. Amadou's government was accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the education budget to line the pockets of certain cabinet ministers. So he had to go.

The parliament then put forward a list of names for possible replacements, and the President of Niger appointed his favorite, who turned out to be Mr. Oumarou, the former "minister of equipment." I wonder what such a minister does..

Lastly, in an event I should have recorded much earlier, the Prime Minister of the Caribbean isle of St. Luca, Sir John Compton, had a heart attack in May sometime, and was hospitalized in New York City. Stephenson King, the Deputy PM, has been acting Prime Minister ever since. It's quite sad, because Mr. Compton was only elected in December, so he hasn't had a chance to do much.

That's all I can report for now, unfortunately.

Goodbye to the 90's

2007-05-31T19:27:00.001-07:00

Corrupt Non-General to Run Nigeria For a Change

Umaru Musa Yar'Adua was sworn in as President of Nigeria on Tuesday, despite the chronic irregularities that marked his election last month. Most of the western world called for a re-vote, but evidently the government did not agree.

I say "the government" because Mr. Yar'Adu was the establishment candidate, and his "victory" signaled the continuation of the ruling regime. He was the hand-picked successor of outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military dictator turned civilian politician. General Obasanjo ruled for two full terms after Nigeria's military regime ended in 1999. He then tried to get the constitution changed to allow him to run for a third term, but that scheme fell through. So then he talked his pal Yar'Adu into running. Yar'Adu was the Governor of Nigeria's biggest state at the time, and a loyal member of General Obasanjo's party, the "People's Democratic Party" or PDP. Despite no longer being President of Nigeria, Obasanjo is still President of the PDP, a fact which has led critics to characterize Yar'Adu as a mere puppet to be controlled by Obasanjo from behind the scenes.

The controversy over Yar'Adu and his dubious election has cast something of a shadow over what should be a happy event for Nigeria- their first civilian-to-civilian transfer of executive power since the 1960's!

Fun Nigeria Fact! The logo of the People's Democratic Party is an umbrella.

Traitorous Scot to Run Scotland

Alex Salmond was sworn in as First Minister of Scotland by Queen Elizabeth the Second on May 17. He is the leader of the separatist Scottish National Party, and as such his assumption to the top job comes as something of a disappointment to those who had been hoping that a coalition government could be cobbled-together to keep him out of power. But no luck, and now Her Majesty's Scottish government is being run by a nationalist whose ultimate political goal is the removal of Scotland from Her Majesty's realm.

Tyrants Re-elected

On Sunday President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was re-elected with 97% of the vote in an election in which he was the only candidate and "yes, I love the President! Now please don't shoot me!" was the only option.

Patrick Ahern was also re-elected as Taoiseach of Ireland. In power since 1997, Mr. Ahern is evidently one of the few European leaders who has ruled for a decade and not yet been forced out of power.

A lot of Euro-leaders came to power in the late 1990's, and only left power in the last little while. This means that we're seeing a rather marked "wave" of regime change across the continent at present. It would be interesting to chart, but for now, amuse yourself with these statistics:

France, Jacques Chirac (1995-2007)
Spain, José María Aznar (1996-2004)
Sweden, Göran Persson (1996-2006)
United Kingdom, Tony Blair (1997-2007)
Germany, Gerhard Schroder (1998-2005)

I see it as a sort of symbolic "end of the 90's" thing. In fact, with Mr. Chirac gone, I believe Mr. Ahern is now the longest-serving leader in all of Europedom, and the only one left who came to power in the '90's.

France and Taiwan

2007-05-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

Not too much has happened recently, other than Nicolas Sarkozy being officially sworn in as President of France on May 16.

The inauguration of the French President used to be a lavish ritual, but according to the Associated Press, Sarkozy has an "impatient, less tradition-bound style" so he just rushed through it without much formality.

In the old days, the President-elect was adorned with various trinkets of office, then got his portrait taken standing beside a bookshelf, to imply how wise he was. Here we see President Georges Pompidou doing that in 1969:

What a great man. But evidently, in Sarkozy's France they just put the trinkets on silk pillows and allow the president's idiot children to stare at them, as seen here:

The only other thing worth noting is that Taiwan got a new Prime Minister on Monday. Or at least that's what the mainstream media says. I have a bit of a pet peeve with the way the media, and the encyclopedia people, and all the rest, try to awkwardly pretend that all countries of the world operate under basically analogous systems of government. The main way they do this is by throwing around the word "prime minister," in reference to all manner of foreign leaders.

The problem is, very few countries actually have a "prime minister" other than England and the former British colonies. In these nations, the PM is a sitting legislator who serves as leader of the largest parliamentary caucus. It is through this role that he serves as the nation's most powerful politician, as he alone presides over the lawmaking process. Many other countries have a parliamentary system as well, but these are often vastly different from the British model we tend to assume is standard.

In other countries, the parliament may be entirely independent from the executive branch of government, meaning there is no one official who controls the legislature in the way a British-style prime minister does. In such systems, there is often a strong president who holds independent executive powers. But sometimes there is a weak president, or a weak monarch, who holds very little power. In such circumstances the government's executive power is controlled by a sort of "middle" figure, who is neither a creature of the legislature nor the full head of state. In Holland, for example, their government is run by a "Minister President" who is an official appointed by parliament, but is not a member of parliament while he governs, nor is his cabinet. I understand a lot of western Europe actually operates on this system.

Now in Taiwan their system is even more complex. There are in essence six branches of government:

The judicial branch, which consists of the courts
The executive branch, which consists of the cabinet
The legislative branch, which consists of the parliament
The "control" branch, which consists of various government watchdog and scrutiny institutions
The "examination" branch, which consists of the senior bureaucracy

Then there's the President of the Republic, whose office is treated as a distinct super-branch that supersedes all the others. But wait! There are other presidents in Taiwan too! Each branch of government is administered by a different president, who is appointed by the President of the Republic and ratified by the parliament. So there is a president of the judicial branch, and a president of the legislative branch, and so on.

The President of the executive branch presides over the cabinet, so people in the English-speaking media have affixed the label of "prime minister" to him. Using that term ignores the complexities of the Taiwanese system of government, however, and implies that he, and say, Tony Blair, occupy offices that are basically the same. I'd like it a lot better if the media would just call people by their own titles.

But anyway, the old "prime minister" was named Su Tseng-chang. He wanted to run for President of the Republic, but earlier this month he was unsucessful in his bid to win his party's nomination. So he resigned, and the PotR appointed a new guy, Mr. Chang Chun-hsiung. He will be the fifth premier in seven years, which should be some indication as to how important that position is in the Taiwanese government. On the right we see the official "passing of the golden thing" ceremony.

Oh yeah, and that President of Romania survived an impeachment referendum, to the surprise of no one. Only 26% voted in favor of removing him.

Scots, Samoans, Timorese, and so on in that order

2007-05-12T00:53:00.000-07:00

Blair Quits

The big news this week is that Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has finally announced a date for his resignation. He will leave office on June 27, 2007. Mr. Blair's been in office since May 7, 1997, so after he resigns he'll have been in office for almost exactly 10 years in all. It's a long reign by British standards, but not unusually so. Mrs. Thatcher was in power for 11.5.

Mr. Blair will resign as leader of his Labor Party first, however, allowing the party to elect a new leader to replace him. Everyone predicts the winner of that election will be Gordon Brown, the uncharismatic Scot who presently runs the British ministry of finance. Brown is considered to be the architect of the economic growth and prosperity Britain experienced in the late 90's and early 2000's, which, as I noted on my other site, is one of the few aspects of the Blair legacy still regarded favorably by the British people. Shortly after Mr. Brown is made head of the Labor Party Blair will formally step down as Prime Minister, and Queen Elizabeth II will in turn appoint Brown as the new PM, in accordance with British parliamentary practice. Watch The Queen to see how that works.

Oh, those Scots!

Another landmark piece of Blair's legacy was the 1999 creation of a semi-autonomous Scottish parliament. This was designed to be an institution that would help placate nationalist sentiment in Scotland by allowing the Scottish people a greater level of political control over their own regional affairs, and thus lessening the degree in which Scotland was directly administered by London.

For the last eight years the Scottish parliament- and thus the Scottish government- has been controlled by the Labor Party of Blair and Brown. This came to an end on May 3, however, when Scottish voters narrowly gave the new plurality of seats to the Scottish Nationalist Party. The SNP, as the name may suggest, is an outwardly nationalist party with separatist ambitions. They seek to make Scotland into an independent state within the European Union and Commonwealth. This is, of course, a pretty radical position to take, making the defeat of Labor particularly embarrassing for the London government, especially when one considers why the Scottish parliament was cooked up in the first place. And on the year of the 300th anniversary of the union of England and Scotland, no less!

But all is not necessarily lost. The SNP only has a one-seat plurality, meaning Labor and the other, smaller parties still outnumber it. It is very possible that those minority parties may in turn gang up, forming a coalition government to keep the SNP out of power. Stay tuned!

And Northern Ireland

Rev. Paisley- you remember him- was sworn in as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland today. Well "First Minister," actually, if you want to get technical about it. A member of Sein Fein became Deputy Prime Minister, but Gerry Adams got nothing.

Outside of the UK...

East Timor

Prime Minister José Ramos-Horta (seen here) won the run-off election in East Timor, and will become that country's second president on May 20.

East Timor was a colony of Portugal well into the 1970's, a reflection of the stubborn manner in which the Portuguese dictatorship tried to hold onto all of its colonial possessions for as long as humanly possible. The Portuguese regime was deposed by leftist forces in 1974, and the new government moved to quickly abandon all of its colonies.

The quick pullout of Portugal plunged East Timor into a civil war, as Marxists fought with rightists to establish control over the new country.

Then in 1975 the neighboring Indonesians invaded, to ensure the victory of the anti-Marxist side. As people who read Noam Chomsky books know, the invasion was a very bloody affair with a very high cost in human lives, yet was also largely ignored by much of the world. The great powers were busy with Israel and Vietnam and stuff.

The plight of East Timor under Indonesian military occupation became something as a cause celeb as the years went on, however. Exiled activists like Mr. Ramos-Horta did much to bring world attention back to the tragedy. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

In 1999 the Indonesians finally left, and the Indonesian Governor of East Timor was replaced by a UN-appointed Administrator from Brazil named Sérgio Vieira de Mello. Mello was a great man who was later killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq. It is really quite tragic how often his name comes up when you study the history of post-war nations.

The East Timorians drafted a constitution and held their first elections in 2001, with Xanana Gusmao becoming first president and Mari Alkatiri becoming first Prime Minister. The country formally stopped being under UN administration in 2002.

Mr. Ramos-Horta succeeded to the office of Prime Minister in 2006 after Mr. Alkatiri resigned amid increasing domestic chaos. And now he's going to be the new President, replacing Xanana Gusmao.

Mr. Gusamo was the only world leader whose name started with the letter "X." Mr. Ramos-Horta will now become one of the world's only two leaders who holds a Nobel Peace Prize. The other is Oscar Arias, the moderate president of Costa Rica who got the award in 1987 for helping mediate the end of the Central American civil wars of the 1980's.

Micronesia

Talking of former colonies....
The Micronesians got a new president yesterday. His name is Manny Mori. He's the former vice president and a longtime Congressman.

"Micronesia" consists of a bunch of tiny Pacific islands that used to belong to the United States. In the 1970's the Micronesians began to demand independence. There was a famous exchange with Henry Kissinger on the matter.

Q: Mr. Kissinger, what about the possibility of Micronesia becoming independent?
A: There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?

And so they became independent in 1979. Well sort of. The terms of their independence was carefully negotiated with the United States, and as a result their post-independent constitution has given the US a lot of influence over the now-sovereign country. America retains the right to build military bases in Micronesia and manage the country's defenses. Micronesians are also encouraged to "consult" with the US government before making foreign policy decisions. This is why Micronesia is one of the only countries in the world that ever supports the United States in UN General Assembly votes on controversial matters.

Of course it's not all one-sided... the US heavily subsidizes the Micronesian economy as well. Hundreds of millions of American tax dollars go to Micronesia every year to keep their welfare state afloat.

The Micronesian system of government is vaguely based on the US model, but more streamlined. There is only one house of Congress, which consists of one Senator for each of the four Micronesian states, plus 10 Representatives chosen based on rep-by-pop. The Congress is also the Electoral College, and elects the President and Vice President once every four years. The President has to be an incumbent Senator. Mr. Manny Mori is the seventh president since independence.

And Lastly....

Some sad news. Malietoa Tanumafili II, the Chief of Samoa has died. He was 94 years old- the world's oldest head of state.

Samoa is another tiny little country in the Pacific Ocean. It was part of New Zealand until 1962, at which point it became independent. They decided to become a constitutional monarchy, but they couldn't quite decide who to make their first paramount chief. So they gave two people the job, Malietoa Tanumafili II and Tupua Tamasese Mea'ole. Things got easier the next year when Mea'ole died, making the other guy sole Chief-for-Life.

Now that he's dead, however, the country will cease being a monarchy and become a republic, in accordance with constitutional amendments passed during his reign. The head of state will henceforth be elected by the Samoan parliament for a five-year term of office.

There are two places in the world called Samoa; this Samoa and American Samoa, which is a US territory. "Plain" Samoa used to be called "Western Samoa" until 1997, at which point they changed their name to just "Samoa." The American Samoans thought this was quite an arrogant thing to do.

Election results wrap-up

2007-05-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

Head of State Update is ready to announce that Nicolas Sarkozy has been elected President of France, winning today's run-off election against Socialist Segolene Royal. His election ensures that the 12-year conservative hold on the French presidency is now going to continue for at least another five years. I'll write more about him once he gets sworn in on the 16th of May.

Turkish Trouble

Talking of Presidential elections, there has been much brouhaha in Turkey lately over the election of their president.

Turkey is a parliamentary republic in which most power is held by the Prime Minister. The President is a weak figure whose main relevance comes from his power to appoint the prime minister from the parliament.

Much of modern Turkish political history has revolved around presidents trying to avoid appointing an Islamist prime minister. The Turkish elites have this extreme obsession with keeping openly religious people out of positions of power because they fear that a "non secular" leader would turn the country into a Middle-Eastern style rathole overnight. The funny thing is that the Turkish people keep voting for religious parties, however, so the political, military, and judicial elites have to resort of a number of decidedly undemocratic gimmicks to keep the Islamists out of office by any means necessary.

An Islamist Party won a plurality of seats in the parliament in 1995 but the President specifically avoided appointing the party's leader PM, as would normally happen. Instead he tried to force the other, smaller parties into unworkable anti-Islamic coalition governments, but they all failed. So he ulitmately had no choice but to appoint the Islamic guy. The political system having "failed" the nation, the Turkish military then staged a coup and forced the new Prime Minister out of office. The new military-backed government banned the Islamic party from ever running again.

But the Islamists founded a new political party, and in 1998 it too won the most seats in the parliament. Once again the President tried to weasel out of appointing the Islamist premier. And once again, after a few unsuccessful coalition governments, the President reluctantly had to appoint the Islamist guy in the end.

But even that's an interesting story, because the leader of the Islamic party at that time was named Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr. Erdogan had previously been jailed for reading an Islamic poem in public, a conviction which made him constitutionally ineligible for the prime ministership. So the President instead appointed Mr. Erdogan's friend Abdullah Gül. Mr. Gül served as Prime Minister for three months, during which he changed the constitution to allow people convicted of "crimes against secularism" to become PM.

Erdogan was appointed Prime Minister, a job which he holds to this day.

Flash forward to the present. The President's term is up, and a new one needs to be chosen. Under the Turkish constitution that's the job of the parliament. Prime Minister Erdogan suggested they make Mr. Gül the new president, and on April 27 they voted to approve him.

This was considered monstrously offensive to the pro-secular set. To many in this camp, the President of Turkey is not just some guy who picks the Prime Minister, but also the symbolic "head of the nation," and the man who must personify and embody all the values of the Republic. The first president of Turkey was a fanatical secularist named Mustafa Ataturk. He ruled as a dictator and pretty much single-handedly destroyed the vibrant Islamic culture that had arisen in Turkey during the days of the Ottoman Empire. Then he established a grotesque personality cult around himself, to remind future generations that he was the greatest Turk who ever lived and anyone who governed in a way different than himself was a horrible traitor to the nation.

Thousands and thousands of anti-religious activists went to the streets to protest Mr. Gül becoming president. They waved Turkish flags and portraits of Ataturk. One particular point of controversy was the fact that Missus Gül choses to wear the headscarf, something President Ataturk had tried to abolish because it was too Islamicy. "A woman who covers her head cannot sit in Ataturk's palace," one protester yelled.

But this week was good news for the secularists. The Turkish Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Gül's election was invalid, because parliament did not have quorum. The parliament has now delayed the election for several months, which will hopefully allow for tensions to cool. And Mr. Gül' says he is not going to run again.

It's an odd place, Turkey. So many people hate Islam, yet still identify as being Muslims. I wonder how high the rate of church attendance is.

New Leader in the Tropics

An interesting thing to chart would be the delay between elections and inaugurations around the world. In the United States, for example, the President is elected in early November, but not sworn in until some two months later, in late January. In France, the waiting period is about two weeks.

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas had an election on Wednesday and their new Prime Minister was sworn in on Friday. My guess is they are one of the quickest countries in this regard.

The new chap's name is Hubert Ingraham. He is a conservative who leads the Free National Movement party. Mr. Ingraham has been Prime Minister once before, for the ten year period spanning 1992 to 2002. Politicians in the Caribbean tend to have long shelf lives. There have only been three Prime Ministers of the Bahamas in all.

In its colonial days the Bahamas used to be a tropical paradise for tax-evading businessmen from Britain and the United States. Then in 1972 it became an independent country, and the charismatic socialist Sir Lynden Pindling became Prime Minister. The businessmen left and the narco-traffickers moved in. Ingraham beat Pindling in 1992, then Inragam himself was beat by Perry Christie in 2002; Perry Christie being the man who was chosen to lead the socialist party following Sir Lynden's 2000 death.

Here we see the new Prime Minister being sworn in by the Governor General of the Commonwealth, who is the small man on the right. Bahamas recognizes Elizabeth the Second as Queen, a fact which the present Governor General finds stupid. He'd much rather be president of a republic.

Some interesting people have run the Bahamas over the years. According to rulers.org from 1706 to 1718 the islands were governed by Blackbeard the Pirate. From 1940 to 1945 the Governor General was Edward the Eighth, the disgraced former King of England. It's quite a fascinating country to study, really.

King Sworn In

2007-05-02T20:47:00.000-07:00

The 13th King of Malaysia was inaugurated last week. He has this long convoluted foreign name, and I'm not quite sure which parts I can omit. Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin ibni al-Marhum Sultan Mahmud is his full name, but I would assume Malaysian people call him something shorter in casual conversation.

Malaysia has an interesting head of state system, one of the most unique in the world. Basically it works as such:

The Federation of Malaysia is a parliamentary, federal democracy. There is a federal government and 13 state governments. Nine of the states are monarchies, with a sultan as head of state, while the other four are republics, with a governor. These people don't do a lot- they're mostly figureheads. Each state has a prime minister, too; they're the ones who actually run the governments.

When they're not cutting ribbons, the nine sultans are part of something called the "Conference of Rulers." Every five years a different member of the Conference gets to be King of Malaysia for a five-year term. Then someone else gets a turn. It rotates in a steady pattern, but since there are 13 states it can take a long time before you get a chance. For example, Malaysia has been an independent country for almost fifty years, and only now are we in the "second cycle."

King Long-Name is the second-ever king from the state of Terengganu. The last sultan from that state ruled as king from 1965-1970. A whole other sultan lived and died inbetween the two of them.

So anyway, yes, last Thursday the new guy was formally inaugurated in a lavish ceremony. His term of office started in late December, but this was his official coronation signaling his formal beginning as King.

The Star, which is a prominent Malaysian newspaper, has a lot of interesting coverage on the inauguration and all the ceremonial folderol associated with it. this is special feature they ran about the old King, when he was inaugurated back in 2001. It has more pretty pictures.

Speaking of pretty pictures, here's a fine portrait of the new King and Queen standing alongside their Prime Minister. It just screams "orientalism:"

The World is a Complicated Place

2007-04-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Quite a bit of interesting news in the last couple of days....

Boris Yeltsin died today, I see. He of course was the first post-Communist President of Russia.

Yeltsin's career

Boris Yeltsin was mayor of Moscow from 1985 to 1987, but was fired from that job because his desires for reforms clashed with the timid agenda of Premier Gorbachav. Comrade Yeltsin then ran for a seat in the trendy new democratic parliament that Gorby established in 1989, as part of his Glasnost reforms.

In 1990 the parliament appointed Yeltsin to be Chairman of the Communist council that ran the "Russian Soviet Republic," the most large and powerful of the Soviet states. When he got bored of that he ran in the first democratic elections in Russian history, and was chosen to be the first President of the Russian Federation, which is what they were now calling the ex-USSR.

After an eventful eight-year term, President Yeltsin resigned on New Year's Eve, 1999. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin became Acting President of the Federation, and the rest is history.

With Yeltsin's death, the number of living Russian presidents plummets from an all-time high of three to a pitiful two. Gorbachev is still alive at age 76. Yeltsin was 76 too, but was one month older.

Here are some fun trivia facts about Yeltsin

Near the end of his term his people toyed with a number of hare-brained schemes to let him subvert the constitution and stay in office forever. One idea was restoring the Russian monarchy under some young idiot prince, with Yeltsin serving as dictatorial "regent" until the kid came of age.

He appointed himself Prime Minister for a few hours in March of 1998 before his aides told him that such a thing was probably unconstitutional.

During the Second World War a number of his fingers were blown off by a grenade. You don't often see photos that highlight that fact, but here's a good one:

Elections in France

The much-watched French presidential election concluded predictably yesterday, with the first round of voting bringing good news for the two front-runners. Nicolas Sarkozy got 31% and Segolene Royal got 25%. Second round of voting to determine the final winner is set for May 6.

Suspension in Israel

The President of Israel, Moshe Katsav was suspended from office a while ago, remember that? At the time, the suspension was only supposed to be for three months, but today the President successfully lobbied the parliament to get it extended for another three. Since Mr. Katsav's term is already scheduled to end in late July, this extended suspension will ensure that he will never act as president again. "Why doesn't he just resign, then?" say his opponents. But resigning would be an admission of wrong-doing, and that would never do.

Mauritania becomes Democracy

Establishment favorite Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi evidently won the election as President of Mauritania a while ago. He was sworn in last Thursday, and appointed Zeine Ould Zeidane as his Prime Minister. Like their formal colonial power France, Mauritania does run-off voting. Mr. Abdallahi and Mr. Zeidane were both candidates in the first round, but only the former went on to round two. Zeidane threw his support behind Abdallahi, and clearly benefitted from doing so.

Regardless, Mr. Abdallahi's swearing-in was an important milestone, as it signaled that country's transition from military to democratic civilian rule. The outgoing President, Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, who has held office since staging a coup in 2005, stepped aside gracefully.

Other countries struggle with the concept

Nigeria had Presidential elections on the weekend, which were, by all accounts, an absolute mess. Pretty much everything that could go wrong, did. Violence, voter fraud, people not getting ballots, intimidation, international condemnation... the works. The incumbent party candidate evidently "won" but it seems very likely they'll have to do the entire election over again. There is just no way his victory will be accepted as legitimate in these circumstances.

East Timor also had elections a while ago... the results were officially declared today. Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta came in first, followed by opposition candidate Lu Olo. But once again, no one got over 50%, so there will be a run-off vote on May 9. But now the other candidates are all uppity. They say there was widespread corruption and irregularities during the vote, and are contesting the results to the High Court. So we'll see how that goes.

President of Romania President no more

2007-04-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

In 2004 Romanians elected this dynamic right-wing reformer named Traian Basescu as their president. He was all pro-business and anti-corruption and tired to make a lot of sweeping changes to Romanian politics and society. Romania joined the European Union on New Year's Day of this year, a fact which Mr. Basescu has used to justify a lot of his reforms. "We must must transform our humble country from a nation of backwards goat-headers and vampires into a dynamic European super-state!" he says. Well not exactly in those words.

Fun fact: President Basescu is one of the few remaining world leaders who is unflinchingly supportive of the war in Iraq.

The President is popular with the people, but not with the rest of the political establishment. The parliament remains dominated by left-wing parties who are quite anti-Basescu. For largely partisan reasons I don't entirely understand, they recently decided to impeach the President, even though the Supreme Court said he had committed no impeachable offense.

Yesterday the Parliament voted 322 to 108 in favor of impeachment, narrowly missing the two-thirds majority needed. So instead they are going with plan B.

President Basescu was declared suspended from office for one month. He was replaced by the Speaker of the Senate, Mr. Nicolae Vacaroiu. Before the 30-day period is up, the parliament will call a referendum on removing Basescu from office permanently. But the good old Associated Press says that this is just a waste of time:

More than half of voting-age Romanians would have to approve a referendum for it to pass, which would be virtually impossible, given Basescu’s popularity and the usually low turnout in Romanian ballots.

And even if he was impeached, he says he'll just run again. That's an interesting impeachment loophole we rarely think about. Impeachment is only effective if it's shameful and humiliating. If they guy doesn't care, and the people still love him, it's not particularly effective.

World mourns

2007-04-17T22:12:00.000-07:00

When tragedies occur, the leaders of the world respond.

"Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community. Today, our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones at Virginia Tech. We hold the victims in our hearts, we lift them up in our prayers, and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today."
-President Bush

"I would like to express, on behalf of Britain and the British people, our profound sadness at what has happened and to send the American people, and most especially of course the families of the victims, our sympathy and our prayers."
-Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain

"[Let me say] how saddened and shocked I am by the terrible shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech University in the United States. It is the worst mass shooting incident in the history of the United States and it is a dreadful event for the university, for those who've lost loved ones, and I, on behalf of the Australian Government and the Australian people extend my sympathy to the people of the United States, and particularly, to the families of those who've died at the hands of a crazed gunman."
- John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia

"Our thoughts are particularly turned towards that family of Mrs. Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a Québécois teacher at this university's Department of Languages who lost her life in this dramatic incident. On behalf of the people of Quebec, I wish to address my sincerest condolences to the families and those closest to the victims that are part of the community of Virginia Tech. This is a tragedy of unimagineable violence, and it is necessary at this time to condemn with fortitude all forms of violence.
- Jean Charest, Prime Minister of Quebec

"I feel very much sorry and troubled, and any such rampant killing of innocent citizens and children is totally not acceptable and I condemn it in strongest terms possible."
- UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon

"Chancellor Angela Merkel was shocked to hear of the mass shooting on a US university campus. She offered US President George W. Bush her condolences. "
- statement from the office of Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

"We learned that a Canadian is among the victims in Virginia and Mr. Speaker, I can say that the prayers, thoughts and condolences of each and every one one us here in the House are with that family. It’s really almost impossible to comprehend why an individual would take his own life and that of so many others in this way but I think we can all say that our thoughts are with all of the victims, their family and the community."
- Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

"The president of the Republic has known with horror and consternation the shootings of Virginia University. He sent to President Bush, to the families of the victims and to American people his most saddened condolence and his complete solidarity, in the name of himself and French people."
- statement from the office of Jacques Chirac, President of France

"I and our people cannot contain our feelings of huge shock and grief. I pray for the souls of those killed and offer words of comfort from my heart for those injured, the bereaved families and the U.S. people."
- Roh Moo-hyun , President of South Korea

I will keep adding as I find more.

How does North Korea work?

2007-04-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

This upbeat gentleman was appointed Prime Minister of North Korea yesterday. As is the case with all government decisions in NK, there was "no explanation" for why he was appointed or why the old prime minister was fired. ALL HAIL THE NEW PRIME MINISTER.

The obvious question to ask is- wait, North Korea has a Prime Minister? I was shocked myself.
Their system of government is confusing to say the least, but theoretically it works something like this:

Kim Il-Sung was the first leader of North Korea. The Soviets installed him as General Secretary of the Communist Party after their military left the peninsula in 1948. A few days later the new Communist legislature appointed him Prime Minister, or "Premier" as we usually say in reference to Commie regimes. In 1972 the North Korean constitution was changed, and Kim Il-Sung upgraded himself to President, giving himself new and greater powers in the process. Someone else became Premier, but the job downgraded and became irrelevant and pointless. This is the job the guy above has inherited. He doesn't have to do much except preside over the North Korean "Supreme People's Assembly," which according to this article is "a rubber-stamp body" that "convenes irregularly once or twice a year." So I'm sure he can handle it.

Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, and according to official government press releases "many animals wept." All sorts of wacky things were done in that emotional time, including another change to the constitution which said that Mr. Kim would be president forever, even in death. So no one else was allowed to assume that job.

No one really led North Korea from 1994 to 1998. Things were very constitutionally ambiguous. Little Kim Jong-Il, the son of K.I.S., was groomed for succession to his father, but was initially quite reluctant. In 1993 Kim Jong had been appointed Chairman of the Defense Committee, which in essence made him head of the armed forces, but it was not a hugely important post and after his father's death he was still outranked by many other officials within the party and state bureaucracy.

Little Kim became more self-confident as the years went on, and party infighting led to him emerging as the favored candidate to lead the nation. In 1998 the constitution was changed to make Chairman of the Defense Committee the "highest office of the state" and Kim was installed as the new secretary of the Communist Party, a post which had gone vacant until then. These are the jobs which he still holds to this day. And this is why it's easier to just call him the "dear leader."

The new Prime Minister's name is Kim Yong-Il, by the way. I thought that was amusing.

Qatar Politics

2007-04-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

On the 3rd of April the Emir of Qatar, Hamid Al-Thani, accepted the resignation of his prime minister and appointed a new one. It's not a very interesting story.

What is interesting, however, is to observe just what a ragingly nepotistic government they have in that country. See if you can spot a trend:

EMIRS

1949-1960...... Ali Al-Thani
1960-1972...... Ahmad Al-Thani
1972-1995...... Khalifah Al-Thani
1995- present...... Hamad Al-Thani

PRIME MINISTERS

1970-1995...... Khalifah Al-Thani
1995-1996...... Hamad Al-Thani
1996-2007...... Abdullah Al-Thani
2007- present...... Hamad J. Al-Thani

CURRENT CABINET

Deputy Prime Minister...... Hamid J. Al-Thani
Minister of Communications...... Ahman Al-Thani
Minister of Defense...... Hamid K. Al-Thani
Minister of Foreign Affairs...... Hamad J. Al-Thani
Minister of the Interior...... Abdullah Al-Thani
Minister of Agriculture...... Abdul Al-Thani

Welcome to the Serene Republic of San Marino

2007-04-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

April 1st is April Fool's Day, but it's also the day the tiny European republic of San Marino gets a new head of state. Or two. San Marino is one of the only countries in the world where two people serve as joint head of state.

The new guys are both named Alessandro. There is Alessandro Mancini and Alessandro Rossi. They hold the title of "Captains Regent" of the republic.

The San Mario constitution works like this: there is a 60-member parliament, and twice a year it elects two Captains; two for April to October, and two for October to April. To ensure political equity the Captains have to be from two different political parties.

Mr. Mancini is from the United Left party while Mr. Rossi is from the Party of Socialists and Democrats. San Marino is a very left-wing country. Until the 1960's the Communists were the largest party in parliament, and their influence lives on to this day. Mr. Mancini's party was actually founded by hardline Communist dissidents who jumped ship after the official Communist Party reformed itself into the more moderate "Progressive Democratic Party" in 1990.

The Captains are just symbolic figureheads, though. The real leader of government is the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the leader of the 10-member cabinet. Currently, that's Fiorenzo Stolfi.

I would say San Marino is a bit over-governed considering it has only about 24,000 people, which is less than most college football stadiums are designed to accommodate. Next time you are at some sporting event imagine if the audience was divided into nine city councils, 11 political parties, a 60-person parliament, and countless bureaucratic offices. And imagine they're all living in a country the size of an airport. That's pretty much San Marino.

Prime Ministers Ahoy

2007-03-30T22:39:00.001-07:00

French-Canadian separatism delt blow

There was big news in Canada this week with the re-election of Jean Charest as prime minister of Quebec.

Quebec is a province of Canada, yet it resents this status. As the only predominantly French-speaking region left in North America, the Quebecers tend to have strong nationalist ambitions and aren't merely content to be lumped in with the nine other "equal provinces" that make up the Canadian federation.

Quebec politics is thus dominated by a nationalist discourse, though the various political parties disagree how to best obtain maximum benefit for the Quebec nation and its people. The Parti Quebecois believes Quebec should leave Canada and become an independent country, while the Liberal Party believes Quebec should stay within Canada, and try to reform the federation from within. These two parties have taken turns governing the province over the last 30 years. Obviously the PQ's time in power hasn't been that successful or they'd be gone by now.

Anyway, Premier Charest is a Liberal. But he is unpopular and in the early days everyone figured he would probably lose the next election. But they underestimated the incompetence of the new leader of the PQ, Andre Boisclair. Monsieur Boisclair is a homosexual and a former cocaine addict, which I suppose are handicaps one can overcome in the super-liberal Quebec political climate. Hewas also very uncharismatic and gaffe-prone, however, and under his leadership the separatists squandered the ample lead they once held. In Monday's election the PQ dropped to third place.

But it was not all good news for the Premier. Charest's party lost a lot of seats in the parliament to the "Democratic Action" party led by Mario Dumont. Dumont is a charismatic right-winger who has achieved a rapid rise in the world of Quebec politics, greatly upsetting the traditional two-party system in the process. He now holds enough seats to significantly influence the agenda of Mr. Charest's newly-weakened government.

Dumont is a nationalist like the rest of them, though he no longer favors outright separation. He does favor a dramatic re-writing of the Canadian constitution in order to give Quebec more powers, though. Among other things he wants the province to be renamed "The Autonomous State of Quebec."

Unrest in Kyrgyzstan

After just two months in office the prime minister of Kyrgyzstan has resigned.

The country separated from the Soviet Union in 1991 and for the next 14 years was ruled by Askar Akayev, a former Soviet scientist. In 2005 they had one of those faddish Eastern European revolutions named after something colorful and deposed him (in this case the "Tulip Revolution"). A longtime opposition politician named Kurmanbek Bakiyev was installed in his place.

But Mr. Bakiyev has not proved to be very popular. Democratic reforms have not been occurring fast enough, and critics say he's just instituted a different kind of oligarchy, except this time under his party. There have been large protests to get him to step down recently, with more looming on the horizon.

On Thursday the President instituted what this article calls "the latest in a series of attempts to take the wind out of opposition sails" and appointed one of his leading political opponents, Almazbek Atambayev, as the new PM. As is so often the case in so many nations, giving more authority to the prime minister is seen as a key way of appeasing the mob.

More prime minister news

In writing this blog I have come to realize just how dime-a-dozen prime ministers are in most of the world. Living in a country where the Prime Minister is basically the supreme elected dictator, controlling all levels of governance with his iron grip, it's always quite a contrast to see that in much of the world a PM is basically just an unimportant figurehead appointed for largely symbolic, partisan reasons.

In the Ivory Coast the President appointed a new prime minister on Thursday. The move is an attempt to unite the various factions of the civil war-prone nation under a government of national unity.

The new PM's name is Guillaume Soro, and he's been a longtime anti-government rebel leader. He tried to launch a coup in 2002, but his people and the president have since made peace. His appointment as PM is this first symbolic step in instituting inclusive multi-party elections.

Since 1985 the Ivory Coast has officially asked the rest of the world not to call it by that name. They prefer the original French name, Côte d'Ivoire. You can't just go around translating the names of countries into your own language just because it's more convenient, they said. After all, we don't call Belarus "White Russia" anymore, even though that's what the name literally means.

Some sad news

2007-03-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

Tragedy in Yerevan

So the Prime Minister of Armenia died today. Andranik Margaryan was his name. He was a fairly young man, only 55. But he had heart problems and they caught up with him this morning.

He is actually the second prime minister of that country to die in the last eight years. In 1999 Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan was assassinated after rebels stormed the parliament and started shooting up the place. Vazgen was then replaced as prime minister by his younger brother Aram, who was then promptly fired and replaced by the late Mr. Maragaryan.

Armenia is another country with a bit of a revolving door at the PM's office. Whoever is chosen to replace Maragaryan will be the 11th prime minister since Armenia separated from the USSR in 1990. Only two presidents though. I wonder which office holds more power...

Local nerd to continue governing city-state

Donald Tsang was re-elected as CEO of Hong Kong this weekend. The Hong Kong Chief Executive is chosen through a convoluted system which the Chinese government considers "democratic" but no one else does. Basically there is this "council of voters" which consists of about 800 people. The Chinese government appoints the majority of them, but some are also elected by citizens of Hong Kong themselves. But only certain citizens who are members of certain elite professions deemed worthy to vote by the People's government.

There was some hope that the Chinese would bow to the demands of democratic activists in Hong Kong and turn the CEO into a truly elected office, chosen by all citizens in a general election. But no. The council voted 81% in favor of giving Mr. Tsang a second term.

Tsang is one of the few world leaders who wears a bow-tie. The only other one I can think of off-hand is Toomas Hendrik, the president of Estonia.

Developments of Early March

2007-03-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the big gap in updates. I have been quite busy with various political-related initiatives in my own life.

Let's take a look at some of the developments which have occurred since the last update:

Duck replaces Sook

On March 7, the Prime Minister of South Korea, Miss Han Myung-Sook resigned. She had served in office for exactly one session of parliament, which is the typical way it works in the South Korean system. Their prime ministers are basically just figureheads who symbolically head the legislature, while the president holds all real power. Miss Han remains more popular than most, however, which has led many to speculate she has abandoned the job in order to run for president in the December 2007 elections.

Miss Han was the second woman to ever serve as Prime Minister of Korea, although the first one, Chang Sang, only held office for a period of 20 days in 2002. She failed to be ratified by parliament when it was revealed that, among other things, she never actually went to Princeton as she claimed on her resume.

The new Prime Minister of South Korea is named Han Duck Soo. He's the former minister of finance or something.

Northern Ireland to attempt unity once again

March 7 also saw the United Kingdom hold parliamentary elections for the disputed territory of Northern Ireland.

Unsurprising to anyone who knows anything about the place, in Northern Ireland elections the voters tend to elect their legislators along strictly religious / nationalist lines. This in turn always results in a horribly polarized parliament. Protestants who favor unity with Britain still hold a demographic majority in NI, so they always win a plurality of seats thanks to strictly demographic voting. Separatist Catholics always form a strong opposition, and politicians from the two groups refuse to get along- much like their constituents.

This election was no different. The Protestant parties won 54 seats while the Catholics won 44.

The two main Northern Irish political parties are led by old men who have been around forever. The separatist Sinn Fein is led by a bearded gentleman named Gerry Adams. He is a former member of the Irish Republican Army, the infamous anti-British terror group (though he denies it). When Bill Clinton invited him to the White House in 1994 Margaret Thatcher said the gesture was horribly offensive to Brits, and rhetorically asked how Americans would feel if she invited Timothy McVeigh to come and visit the Queen. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher hated him so much she actually banned British television from broadcasting his voice on the air.

The leader of the pro-British Protestant Democratic Unionist Party is Ian Paisley (seen here), an 80-year-old Presbyterian priest. He really hates Catholics. Imagine the most hysterical, bigoted, anti-Catholic remark possible and Reverend Paisley has probably said it. He's called Pope John Paul II the anti-Christ on numerous occasions, for example, including at least once to his face.

Paisley is now going to become the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and Gerry Adams will likely become minister of something-or-other. Both parties have softened up a bit in recent years, and now say they are prepared, in theory, to work together and form a joint government of national unity.

This was supposed to happen in 2002, but at the last minute the parties refused to work together so Tony Blair suspended the Northern Irish government and imposed direct rule from London. Since Britain has no constitution he's allowed to do that kind of thing. He might do it again if this national unity business never actually materializes.

African country holds election

The small African nation of Mauritania held presidential elections on the 11th- the first democratic elections in the country's history. Former cabinet minister Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdellahi won 25% of the vote while longtime opposition politician Ahmed Ould Daddah won 21%. Since no one won a majority, the two men will be forced to undergo a second, sudden-death round of elections where all the minor candidates are excluded. I've always liked that system of electing people. I wish we used it in this country.

Horrible sham country gets horrible sham president

2007-03-03T15:53:00.000-08:00

Russian Prez Vladimir Putin appointed a new president of Chechnya the other day. I was going to make this just a brief post, but the history of Chechan leadership is interesting, and deserves a fuller explanation.

Basically the Russians have been fighting with the Chechens forever. An Islamic people, they were originally annexed by the Czar's Army in 1859. The Soviets proceeded to spent many decades figuring out how to best govern them. From 1957 to 1991 Chechnya was part of something called the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. A puppet state within the USSR, in other words, not unlike Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan.

Then in 1991 the Soviet Union fell apart and the Chechen government declared independence, as was the style at the time. But unlike many of its other colonies the Russians weren't prepared to let Chechnya go without a fight. In 1994 Yetlsin's forces invaded the country and assassinated its rebel president. There was a tenuous cease-fire in the late 90's and the Russians agreed to negotiate independence in 2001. But then Putin invaded the country a second time in 1999. The civil war has gotten much more gruesome and bloody since then as Putin- who has no interest in negotiating Independence- tries desperately to establish firm Russian authority over the rebellious, Islamic republic.

The leadership of Chechnya is quite muddled. Here's a timeline

1) Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected as the president of Chechnya right after the Soviet Union broke down in 1991. He was assassinated by the Russians in 1996.

2) Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was acting president from 1996 to 1997. He presided over the peace deal that saw the Russians withdrawal most of their forces.

3) Former Soviet colonel Aslan Maskhadov was elected in 1997 and the Russians agreed to recognize his government as legitimate. Pro-Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia prompted Putin to blame Maskhadov for stirring shit up, and in 1999 Russia broke off relations with his government.

Putin instead installed Nikolay Koshman as Chechen head of state. There have been two rival governments in Chechnya ever since, one of whom are the heirs of the pro-Moscow Koshman, the other the heirs of the pro-independence Maskahadov.

FORK ONE

4) The Russians killed Maskhadov in 2005. An Islamist cleric named Sheikh Abdul Halim replaced him, but then the Russians killed him too.

5) The current rebel president (since June of '06) is Doku Umarov, a longtime rebel leader.

FORK TWO

4) Putin's guy, Koshman, was replaced in 2000 by Akhmad Kadyrov. Kadyrov was assassinated by Chechen rebels in 2005.

5) Kadyrov was replaced by an austere (and very pro-Russia) Chechen politician named Alu Alkhanov. He is basically the only guy in this story who did not get horribly murdered in some way. Putin liked him so much he made him his minister of justice and recalled him from his job in Chechnya.

6) On March 4 Alkhanov's replacement was confirmed. His name is Ramzan Kadyrov and he's the son of the late Akhmad Kadyrov mentioned above. He is considered to be a very cruel, pro-Russian, anti-rebel hardliner, a fact which I am sure has nothing to do with the circumstances surrounding his father's death.

Neither of the Chechen regimes are democratic. The rebel presidents used to be elected, but now they're more or less just installed by a little terrorist fiat. The pro-Russian presidents were originally chosen through crooked sham elections in which the guy Putin liked always won by 80% or more. But evidently even that was too democratic, so in 2004 Putin changed the constitution and made it so he gets to appoint the presidents himself.

So that's Chechnya. Don't go there.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

2007-03-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

SURVIVED- Prime Minister Prodi of Italy. The President of the Republic refused his resignation and instead forced him to undergo a new vote of confidence in the parliament. They voted to keep him in office. 162 to 157 in the Senate and 342 to 253 in the House of Deputies.

RE-ELECTED- Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal was re-elected on Sunday with 55% of the vote. Senegal is one of Africa's more stable nations with a fairly functional democracy. It's the only country on the continent to never have experienced a military coup.

GRUDGINGLY RE-APPOINTED- another new prime minister in the republic of Gueina. As noted in a previous post, the unions had been demanding the President appoint a strong, independent PM to institute a greater "check" on executive power in the Gueinean government. The president tried to install some hack politician, but the unions continued their protests, even after martial law was imposed. The President blinked first, and has now appointed the respected diplomat Lansana Kouyate as PM. He vows to be an effective administrator.

BEATIFIED- Well, not quite, but evidently the Tanzanian branch of the Roman Catholic Church has been pressing for Pope Benedict to beatify the late president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. Beatification of course being step one on the status to full-on sainthood. Nyerere was one of Africa's first post-colonial presidents and is admired throughout the continent as an inspiring symbol of nationalism and independence. In a poll on the "greatest Africans of all time" he was ranked number four.

President Nyerere was a humble and strongly religious man, but he was also a socialist dictator who badly mismanaged his nation's economy and repressed political freedom. But by African standards his rule was downright pleasant, hence the movement to sanctify him.

The last head of state to be beatified was the late Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Karl the First (1916-1918). Pope John Paul praised him for his commitment to securing peace in the First World War.

The late Governor General of Canada, Georges Vanier, is another Head of State who has been proposed for beatification. He was a heroic soldier who fought in the First World War and then later served as a European diplomat in WW2. He tried to encourage his country to accept fleeing Jewish refugees from Europe when most of the Canadian government was strongly against such an idea. I hope he gets beatified before Nyerere.

The "T" is silent and so is the prime minister

2007-02-23T23:34:00.000-08:00

The Prime Minister of Tchad died today. A longtime victim of heart problems, he died in a Paris hospital while on leave for medical attention. He was 57. Or possibly 58 or 59. No one seems to know exactly when he was born.

But it doesn't matter, because he was not a terribly important politician. Pascal Yoadimnadji was appointed PM almost exactly two years ago, on February 3, 2005. A longtime member of Tchad's ruling "Patriotic Salvation Movement" party, he was the fifth prime minister in six years.

Tchad, also known as just "Chad," is a landlocked African country that was formerly a colony of France. It's located in a particularly bad neighborhood, with Libya on one side and the Sudan on the other. Both countries have a long history of meddling in Tchadian affairs.

The country is ruled by Colonel Idriss Deby, a military strongman who came to power in a 1990 coup which deposed the previous strongman. He's been somewhat more gentle than his predecessors, introducing some democratic reforms here and there. But he's also simultaneously strengthened his own rule. This is actually a fairly common tactic among African leaders, I notice. Amid much fanfare they create a democratic parliament and hold free elections, but then very quickly after they pass a constitutional amendment eliminating term limits for the president, or something like that. A real "two steps forward one step back" syndrome.

No party other than the Patriotic Salvation Movement has ever controlled a majority of seats in the Tchadian legislature, and as a result the prime ministers of Tchad are just faceless technocrats who the President rotates around as he pleases, with little consequence for day-to-day governance.

Though he is something of an autocrat, Colonel Deby's regime still enjoys a lot of western support. This is mainly because his strong government is seen as a regional counter-balance to Quaddaffi, and now the fanatical death squads of the Sudan, as well.

Here's another fun fact about Tchad. Their flag is exactly the same as Romania's. This has caused tension between the two countries.

Prodi Parts

2007-02-21T20:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, but there just haven't been many interesting developments to note as of late. But today had some big news!

Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister of Italy, has resigned. The move came following a narrow vote of no-confidence in the Italian Senate, in which Mr. Prodi's coalition only holds a one vote majority.

With all the focus on Iraq, it's easy to forget that there is also a war going on in Afghanistan. In part due to this lack of attention, and the diversion of much American resources, NATO forces in Afghanistan are now stretched quite thin. The remaining western generals in the country- Canadians key among them- have been demanding the rest of NATO start pulling its weight, and either expand or consolidate its military commitments to fighting the Taliban.

Signor Prodi was sympathetic, and thus tried to pass a bill that would keep the over 1,000 Italian troops currently stationed in Afghanistan in that country for another year. But Prodi is also a leftist, and his socialist buddies in parliament are strongly anti-American and anti-military, and don't want Italians fighting any longer in what they perceive to be an American war. So a couple of them voted against him in the senate, rejecting his extension proposal. And under the Italian system, which seems designed to insure as little political stability as possible, any time the Prime Minister loses a vote in the parliament that constitutes a breech of parliamentary confidence and either forces him out of office or forces new elections.

The referee is the President of Italy, who gets to decide which of the two paths to pursue. The current President is named Giorgio Napolitano. He used to be a leading member of Italy's infamously pro-Soviet Communist Party, before it was dissolved following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He was appointed by parliament in 2006, by Prodi's people. One thus assumes that he will make whatever decision is in the best interests of the Italian left.

Pizza Parliament

Prime Minister Prodi has been in office for nine months; he was elected in May, beating longtime PM Silvio Berlusconi.

Italian politics have a reputation for being comically chaotic, and the Prime Minister's Office is often joked about having a revolving door. Berlusconi was the first Italian PM in almost 20 years to serve more than three years in office; he was the first PM in 38 years to serve over four. The last PM to achieve that milestone was Aldo Moro in 1968. (Prime Minister Moro was later taken hostage and assassinated by Communist terrorists. It's just an interesting story, you should look it up sometime.)

Because their time in office is so short, an Italian prime minister's political career rarely ends once he leaves office. It's actually quite common for ex-PMs to regain the prime ministership if they just hang around long enough. Prodi was previously PM from '96 to '98, and now it's looking possible that Giuliano Amato, a fomer two-time socialist PM, will replace him in '07.

A while back I made a complete chart of post-war Prime Ministers of Italy for reference. As you can see, there have been 39 PMs since 1945, which is roughly one every 1.5 years. The media will often throw the phrase "62 governments" around, which makes Italy look even less stable. But a government is different than a Prime Ministership. One Prime Minister can preside over several different "governments" during his term; a "government" in this sense simply refers to a parliamentary coalition and cabinet. Berlusconi was the first PM since Mussolini to only go through one government.

Sham election concludes predictably

2007-02-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

On Sunday there was a presidential election in Turkmenistan, supposedly to democratically elect a successor to the late dictator Turkmenbashi. However, as I mentioned last month, the candidate roster was not exactly a thrilling milieu of diversity. All six candidates were from the party of the late despot, which naturally is the only party legal in Turkmenistan.

Unsurprisingly, the election was outrageously crooked. Most western commentators agree that the whole episode served little purpose other than to put some gloss of legitimacy on the rule of the acting president, Gubanguly Berdymukhammedov. Mr. B was soundly ratified with 90% of the vote, in a turnout that was apparently 99%. I'm sure the only reason why he didn't get a larger percent was because he's planning to stick the other candidates into his cabinet, and thus make himself look like he's establishing a "government of national unity." I like the understated headline in the International Herald Tribune: "Vote in Turkmenistan is labeled implausible."

Today Berdymukhammedov was sworn in. As is the tradition in most Eastern European countries, during his inauguration he was decorated with the presidential chain of office, and given the sceptre of power to hold. He kissed the flag passionately, symbolizing his duty to the nation as commander-in-chief.

A Country of heart problems and labor unrest

2007-02-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

The Republic of Guinea is a small country in western Africa that separated from France in 1958. Since independence, it has only been ruled by two men.

For the first 26 years the republic was governed by Ahmed Sékou Toure, a union leader who had been one of the most prominent anti-French activists during the colonial period. A Marxist, he tried to bring the country under a socialist economic system- which only further impoverished what has already been one of France's poorer colonies.

In 1984 President Toure was having heart problems, so he traveled to the United States to seek medical attention. He ended up dying on the operating table.

Taking advantage of the vacuum of power, back in Guinea General Lansana Conte staged a coup, and declared himself the new president. He has been in power ever since.

General Conte (seen here sitting under a picture of himself) has tried to ruled with an iron fist just like his predecessor. But as a non-Marxist he could not rely on the support of Guinea's powerful labor unions, which had been a traditional supporter of the old president's regime. He's also had to face unrest in the military and increasing pressures from the public at large to democratize the nation's political system.

The President has been seen in public less and less since 2003. Like Toure before him, Conte suffers from heart problems and has to seek medical attention in western countries. The fact that the fearless leader is so close to death has emboldened the General's various political opponents. For the last two weeks the unions have been leading a crippling general strike, bringing Guinea's faltering economy to standstill. They had been demanding Conte's resignation, but then later softened their rhetoric, and simply demanded the president appoint a prime minister.

In the history of Guinea presidents sometimes share power with a prime minister, then abolish the PM 's office when they get tired of doing that. President Conte most recently abolished the prime minister's job in April of last year.

But yesterday he caved to the unions and appointed Eugene Camara as PM. Camara is a longtime member of the presidential cabinet, a fact which has not made him incredibly popular with the opposition.

The unions seemed to be under the impression that they would have veto power over the president's choice of prime minister. That was the whole idea behind the blackmail. So they're quite pissed that Conte has simply installed some hack loyal to himself, and are now vigorously opposing the appointment.

Will the unrest continue? Stay tuned!

The Villain in the Panama Hat

2007-02-08T23:13:00.000-08:00

This was a big story last week I never had a chance to cover. Apparently a Florida parole board has ruled that General Manuel Noriega, the former drug-dealing despot of Panama, will be released from his American prison cell in September of '07.

From 1983 to 1989 General Noriega ruled Panama with an iron fist, but contrary to a misconception spread by lazy journalists, he was never actually president of the country. He was merely commander of the Panamanian Armed Forces, a position that was nominally subservient to the country's elected president. Panama actually went through seven different presidents during Noriega's career as head of the military. Most were obedient puppets of the General, and Noriega's people rigged the elections to keep it that way.

In 1989 Panama's parliament, also largely controlled by the General, declared Noriega "maximum leader of national liberation." The act was in response to a contested presidential election that had happened earlier, in which the ant-Noriega candidate won. Noriega of course ruled the election invalid, and dispatched his goon squad to beat the poor man's face in with a lead pipe.

The United States viewed Noriega's despotism with increasing concern, especially once the General began to turn his aggression towards American soldiers stationed in the US-controlled Panama Canal Zone. Noriega's high profile role in international narco-trafficking was similarly troubling, considering the ruling Republican Party had made much of its commitment to the "war on drugs" and cracking down on dealers both at home and abroad. In December of '89 President George H. W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama. Noriega was deposed, and then captured by US forces. For the last 17 years he has been held as a prisoner of war in a Florida prison.

When he is freed he says he wants to go back to Panama, but it's likely that will just result in more prison time. Panama has a number of outstanding warrants for his arrest, and he has already been found guilty in absentia for a number of crimes committed during his tenure as army chief. It is also possible the United States may chose to extradite him to France, where he is also wanted on a number of outstanding charges.

Noriega became Commander of the Panama Armed Forces in 1983, shortly after the former commander, General Omar Torrijos died in a mysterious plane crash. The conspiracy theorist set argue the plane crash was orchestrated by the CIA because the Americans wanted to bring Noriega to power. When he was a lower-ranking soldier Noriega was an active CIA informant and sold classified information from his government to the United States.

The current president of Panama, Martín Torrijos, is the son of the late General.

2007-02-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been much interesting head of state news recently. The main thrust of this blog is keeping track of who's coming to power and winning elections around the world, but there hasn't been any developments of that sort over the last few days. A couple of interesting elections are just around the corner, however, so things should start to pick up.

Canada continues slow march to independence

When I was in Texas this summer, people would ask me why my country (Canada) still had the Queen's face on our money. I explained to my American friends that it was because we Canadians had an evolution not a revolution, which is some trite phrase I picked up somewhere. The idea is that while the United States made a "clean break" with its colonial power Canada did not, and instead had to slowly evolve from a colony into a sovereign country through a series of piecemental constitutional reforms.

And that gradual process continues to this day. Like a cluttered attic, the Canadian state still contains many colonial-era relics which need to be thrown out at some point in the future, as we continue to build an indepedent national identity. Most of these relics relate to the British monarchy, and British monarch, a woman who will remember still serves as Canada's legal head of state.

As head of state, Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, is also the supreme commander of the Canadian armed forces. The Canadian military remains very much tied to a culture of monarchism and royal servitude, a fact which is well reflected in many of the names, symbols, and traditions of the armed forces. Like most militaries, the Canadian forces are divided into many different regiments, and traditionally one of the Queen's uninteresting children or cousins have always served as symbolic "Colonel-in-Chief" of each one. They don't do much, maybe just visit "their" troops once every decade or so. But they do serve as an important symbolic link of subservience between British royalty and the Canadian soldiers.

But not anymore! The Minister of Defense has now appointed the first-ever Canadian colonel-in-chief to head Canada's second-oldest military regiment, the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. To ease the royal transition, the new colonel will be Adrienne Clarskon, a woman who served as governor-general of Canada from 1999 to 2005. As the Queen's personal envoy in Canada (though appointed by the Canadian prime minister) the governor-general of Canada serves as the nation's symbolic commander-in-chief, the highest military rank behind the Queen herself. When she was in power, Ms. Clarkson took her C-in-C duties more seriously than most of her predecessors, traveling overseas to visit army camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere. For this, she apparently "endeared" herself to the armed forces, or so the Minister says.

Clarkson will be replacing Lady Patricia Brabourne, a British aristocrat who is the eldest daughter of the late Lord Louis Mountbatten. Her father was most famous for being the last Viceroy of India, before being killed by the IRA.

Clarkson herself was born a British subject in the colony of Hong Kong. She was the first governor-general born outside of Canada or Britain.

Sigh, another new country

2007-02-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the United Nations released its much anticipated report on the future of the disputed territory of Kosovo. They recommend that Kosovo should become an independent country under constant international "supervision."

This has the Serbs mad, of course. Historically Kosovo has been the capital of Serbian Christendom and civilization. Their "Jerusalem," as they are fond of saying. But the territory has not been either Serbian or Christan for quite a long time. Right now it's a mostly Muslim area, inhabited by ethnic Albanians. Good old Slobodoan Milosoevic tried to fix that when he was president of Yugoslavia, using the Serbian army to "ethnically cleanse" as many Albanian-Muslims out of Kosovo as possible. But that didn't really endear the Kosovars to Serbia, and only furthered their desires for independence.

After the 1999 NATO bombing campaign to drive out the Serbs, Kosovo was placed under UN occupation, and became non-sovereign territory. I once went to school with an exchange student from Kosovo and he had to travel around with UN documents instead of a passport because he was no longer legally a citizen of anywhere.

The effective ruler of Kosovo is a UN-appointed individual known as the "special representative of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission." The first man to hold the job was Sérgio Vieira de Mello, a highly respected Brazilian diplomat who had been active in all manner of humanitarian causes and conflict-resolution initiatives. He was later killed in Iraq when a car bomb blew up his hotel.

There have been eight administrators since him, two from the US, two from Denmark, two from Germany, and one each from France and Finland. The current guy is from Germany, his name is Joachim Rücker. According to his low-budget website, he was previously mayor of the German city of Sindelfingen.

Since 2002 Kosovo has had a non-UN government as well, but it is highly subsidiary to the UN authority. It's also very much dominated by the Muslim-Albanians. 99% of Serbs refused to vote in the last parliamentary election because they don't consider it legitimate for Kosovo to have an independent government.

There have been five prime ministers in the last four years. It's mostly because the second prime minister, elected in 2004, was indicted for crimes against humanity and sent to the Hauge. It's been a bit of a scramble to find a stable replacement ever since. The current PM is Agim Çeku, who is a strong supporter of the independence plan.

That plan now must be approved by the Security Council, and it probably will. There are some fears that Russia might veto it, because the Russians don't want to give precedence to the practice of allowing uppity Eastern European Muslim provinces to separate from their master states, *cough cough Chechnya cough.*

Oh yeah, and what about Serbia. A while ago I reported the election results over there, which saw the self-styled Radical Party win the most seats. It now seems unlikely that the fascist nut who runs that party will become prime minister, but it still remains to be seen exactly what form the government of that country will eventually take, because of the "pizza parliament" syndrome they are currently experiencing. It will either be an alliance government of all the non-Radical parties (who have little in common except opposing the Radicals) or a joint government of the Radicals and the second-largest party, the moderates.

It's boring, but I will keep you informed.

The transformation of dictatorships

2007-01-31T19:46:00.000-08:00

What is Hugo Chavez up to?

Today the Venezuelan parliament formally passed a bill that will give President Chavez the power to unilaterally decree laws without any sort of legislative approval. The bill, which was unironically titled the "enabling act," signals the effective transformation of Venezuela from a one party-dominated ultra-populist pseudo democracy to some manner of outright autocracy. Chavez' move can be seen as particularly authoritarian precisely because it is so thoroughly unnecessary. It's not like he's had a hard time getting laws passed prior to this.The President's allies already hold every single seat in the legislature, and often approve his bills unanimously. All the opposition parties boycotted the last parliamentary election because they figured it would be crooked. This may have been the case, but they probably wouldn't have won anyway.

In the west, our perception of dictatorship is usually something inherently undesirable- something we can fight in a war or something citizens can flee to our countries from. But in reality, most dictatorships are usually quite popular at first, as they arise to resolve previously unresolvable domestic problems. Because they fix elections we assume that they couldn't win a mandate on their own, but this is not necessarily the case. It is only once dictators stay in power for too long and become bloated and sadistic under their own sense of unaccountability do their former backers begin to loose faith, and the public imagination begins to regard them as wicked. If someone had shot Hitler, Stalin, or Mao fairly early on in their careers there can be no doubt they'd be remembered in much fonder terms today.

It's a challenge, because the temptation is high to want to nip dictatorships "in the bud" before they have a chance to develop into something more sinister. Yet the bud phase is when they are strongest, with the most supporters most likely to put up the strongest fight.

Castro Brothers celebrate anniversary

Earlier in the day Senor Chavez met with Fidel Castro, a man who is presently in the "photographic proof is needed to confirm that he is still alive" phase of his dictatorial career.

Last month the CIA predicted that Castro would likely die within the next 30 days, but now that new photos have surfaced showing Chavez hanging out with a "visibly healthier" Fidel, US officials are now claiming that they "don't actually have any idea what the status of his health is." Castro is 80 years old right now. I remember because he's the same age as Queen Elizabeth- the two were only born three months apart.

Exactly six months ago today Fidel temporarily stepped aside as President of Cuba, allowing his younger brother, Raul (seen here) to act as president on his behalf. Along with being acting president, the younger Castro is also first vice president of the Council of State, first vice president of the of the Council of Ministers, second secretary of the Communist Party, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and maximum general of the army. So he has his fingers in a lot of pies.

Christopher Hitchens said that General Raul's ascension to the presidency will more or less signal Cuba's transformation from a sexy revolutionary regime to a very unglamorous, run-of-the-mill Latin American junta state.

Ex-Kings

2007-01-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

As long as we're talking about kings, there was an interesting little profile in the New York Times the other day about Michael the First of Romania, "the last living head of state from World War II."

He has quite the interesting life story. Ascending to the throne at age five, he was initially sidelined by his country's fascist government. By the time he turned 22 he was old enough to know better and backed a coup to depose Romania's infamous pro-Nazi prime minister, Ion Antonescu, installing a pro-Allied government in his place. For this the Western Allies rewarded Michael by handing his country over to Stalin, who in turn installed a Communist regime that ended the monarchy.

Today the 85-year-old Michael lives in Switzerland and occasionally goes back to Romania for brief visits, now that the commies are gone. He hopes he'll be restored one day, but that seems rather unlikely.

Michael is unusual among living deposed monarchs in that he is actually a fairly popular individual who people generally respect. Not enough to go through the hassle of restoring the monarchy, but a quiet reverence all the same.

There are a handful of other deposed monarchs kicking around the world, but they are all generally controversial figures, if not outright unpleasant and actively disliked.

King Constantine the Second of Greece (born 1940) gave royal approval to a military coup in 1967 that put an end to a series of faltering interim governments and installed a right-wing dictatorship. A few months later he felt guilty and tried to promote a counter-coup, but the generals quickly put that down and Constantine was forced into exile. The Greek people never forgave the King for his incompetent meddling, and when democracy was restored they voted overwhelmingly to permanently make Greece into a republic. He now lives in London.

Czar Simon the Second of Bulgaria (born 1937) has a life story that is sort of similar to Michael's. He became Czar in 1943, at age six, after his father was poisoned by the Nazis. Bulgaria tried to stay neutral in the war but the country was eventually invaded by the USSR and the monarchy was abolished in favor of a pro-Stalin puppet regime. Exiled, Simon was raised in Spain and dreamed of one day becoming a politician. When the commies left, he returned to Bulgaria and fulfilled his dream, founding a political party. He was elected prime minister in 2001, but then lost his bid for re-election in 2005.

Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan (born 1914) became king at age 19 after his father was assassinated in 1933. He repeatedly clashed with the government of the hardline prime minister Mohammed Daoud Khan, and in 1973 Khan changed the country into a republic so he would no longer have to share power with the monarch. The King moved to Italy where he lived for almost 30 years. Then in 2002 when the Taliban were deposed he returned to the country with American backing. Some Afghanis regard him with nostalgia, as a symbol of a more peaceful time. Others think he's just some doddering old geezer. Regardless, Afghanistan is too much of a tribally-divided society to consider restoring a monarchy, as that would implicitly entail placing one tribal group symbolically "above" the others.

I think there are a number of factors explaining why you don't see monarchies abolished as much these days as you used to:

1- All western monarchical countries (ie: Europe and Japan) have democratized their systems of government to the point where the king or queen is entirely powerless, and thus politically uncontroversial. Most of the European monarchs who were deposed in the 20th Century were singled out because of their unwanted meddling in the affairs of the civilian government.

2- There is no real precedent for how to "politely" remove a monarchy. As mentioned, most monarchs deposed in the last century were kicked out on bad terms, with strict laws being passed shortly thereafter that banned the royal family from ever setting foot in their former realms again. If, say, Britain was to become a republic tomorrow, it would seem excessively cruel for the British government to order the royals out of the country. After all, they themselves have done nothing wrong... they're just part of a bad institution. But if they stayed, the legitimacy of the new republican government would be undermined, since presumably the media and tabloids and general public would still focus on the affairs of the princes and princesses- even if they no longer legally held such titles. So what can you do, really? Many socialist European politicians find this dilemma to be more of a hassle than it's worth. This is why, for example, Sweden still has a monarchy.

3- Outside of the west (ie: the Middle East) monarchs who are in currently power are very authoritarian leaders who have successfully established a regime of oppression to quickly crush any opposition to their rule. The monarchy is the government, not merely a "part" of it.

In short, to survive a monarchy has to be either entirely democratic (and thus powerless) or entirely authoritarian. Monarchies have to pick one of the two choices and evolve permanently in that direction. A monarchy that tries to be sort of authoritarian and sort of democratic at the same time is a monarchy that is bound to fail. This is what our friend in Nepal has recently learned.

Then of course, there is the distinct debate over Commonwealth monarchies, like Canada, Australia, Jamaica, etc. But that's for another time.

The surviving monarchs of Europe.

Will Nepal go republican?

2007-01-26T21:51:00.000-08:00

The horrible civil war in Nepal came to a formal end in late 2006, when the Nepalese government and communist rebels finally came together and signed a UN-backed peace agreement. Under the terms of the deal, the Commies were given a quarter of the seats in the Nepalese parliament and a special interim government of "national reconciliation" was sworn in.

For years the communists had been engaged in a bloody uprising to overthrow the government of Nepal and establish a communist state, as Marxists tend to do. Their main villain was the autocratic King of Nepal, this monstrous, zombie-looking old man who assumed the Nepalese throne in 2001 after his psychotic nephew murdered the rest of the royal family. Frustrated with his government's inability to wage an effective war against the Marxists, in 2005 the King fired the civilian cabinet and prime minister, assuming all executive powers for himself.

But this was not popular, since you cannot destroy freedom in order to save it. Communist and anti-Communist alike were soon brought together by their mutual hate of their oppressive king. He was forced to bring parliament back, and they expressed their gratitude by voting to strip him of all political power.

Under this new government of national reconciliation the King is no longer even recognized as "head of state." That title has instead been transferred to the Prime Minister. So the monarch is now in some sort of weird legal limbo. In June the Nepalese people will elect members of a special constitutional convention who will in turn decide whether or not the country is to formally become a republic.

But the signs are looking strong that the monarchy is permanently on the way out. According to a story in the Associated Press today the Nepalese finance ministry is going to take the King's portrait off all of the country's banknotes.

If Nepal does become a republic it will be the first country to abolish a monarchy since the Island of Mauritius separated from the British crown in 1992. Runner up is Fiji, which separated from the British crown in 1987. Because I, as a Canadian, live under the British crown as well, I know that legally we are supposed to consider Queen Elizabeth to be several different, distinct monarchs, rather than just some sort of imperial mother hen we all share. I don't think many history books will record 1987 as the day the "Fijian monarchy" ended, however.

The last real monarchy to be abolished was the Iranian one, following the 1979 Islamic revolution that deposed the Shah.

Figurehead in trouble

2007-01-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

For at least the last year or so the President of Israel, Moshe Katzav, has been at the heart of a number of swirling rumors about his sexual promiscuity. But the accusations not simply embarassing, Clinton-esque shenanigans. A number of Israeli women have actually come forward claiming they were raped by the president and obsessively stalked, though the exact details of the charges have not yet been made public.

Regardless, this undeniably looks bad from a PR perspective, so there have been numerous calls for President Katzav to resign. Like many presidents, he is immune from prosecution so long as he stays in office. He's tried to compromise on the matter by suggesting he may take a temporary "leave of absence" but this cop-out has pleased no one.

Today the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, called for Mr. Katzav to resign, echoing recent polls which have over 70% of Israelis wanting him to step down.

The President of Israel is a largely useless figurehead position which many Israelis have advocated abolishing over the years. His only real duties are ceremonial, but Mr. Katzav hasn't been doing many of those lately cause no one really wants his blessing anymore.

If Mr. Katzav resigns- or is impeached- the speaker of the Israeli parliament will become acting president. Right now the speaker is Ms. Dalia Itzik, and if she takes office she will become the first female president in Israeli history. Mr. Katzav is the first president in Israeli history to be born outside of either Europe or Israel, having immigrated from Iran in 1950. He was also the first right-wing president, and together he has repeatedly alleged that these two facts have made him a persecuted outsider, earning the ire of the political establishment.

Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952 but he refused. They stuck his portrait on the Israeli five dollar bill anyway.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

The committee of the Israeli legislature charged with addressing the Katzav situation has narrowly voted to temporarily allow the president to step down. This will help him escape the scandal spotlight, but does not affect his overall immunity. Quipped one dissenting lawmaker, "The decision taken today is a prize for a man accused of rape. [...] Instead of finding himself behind bars, this man charged with rape gets a prize of continuing to serve as president."

Ms. Itzik is now Acting President of Israel for three months. But she is only "acting for" Katzav, and thus not full acting president. What's the difference?

Someone is "acting for" an individual when that individual is still legally holding office, but is temporarily not able to exercise the powers of said office, for whatever reason. Vice President Cheney was "acting for" Bush on June 29, 2002, when the president underwent a sedated colonoscopy. Prime Minister Olmert similarly "acted as" prime minister of Israel for several weeks following Ariel Sharon's debilitating stroke and subsequent coma. In Canada Prime Minister Harper's recent cabinet shuffle was formally ratified by a justice of the Supreme Court who was "acting for" the Governor General, while she was on vacation. "Acting for" leaders usually hold office for such brief periods of time they are rarely recorded in official chronologies.

A full "acting" leader, by contrast holds office when the incumbent is completely gone, and full-time replacement is thus needed. For example, if the president dies or is impeached, someone has to be installed immediately afterwards. "Acting" leaders of this sort are recognized as the full head of state and occupy their office permanently, until the situation can be resolved (for example, with fresh elections or what have you). Sometimes you'll also see terms like "interim" or "caretaker" used to describe leaders of this sort.

Olmert is an interesting case study because he went through all three distinct phases. When Sharon had his stroke he was "acting for" the prime minister. Then Sharon was declared permanetly incapacitated, and removed from office. Olmert then became full "acting" PM. And then he won an election and now he's just a plain old democratically-elected prime minister.

Some countries don't like the idea of un-elected people exercising power, so they specifically limit the powers that an acting president who replaces an elected one can have. And some countries, like the United States, don't distinguish the two offices at all. People never refer to Gerald Ford as the "acting president" of the US, even though that's more or less all he was.

Becoming an "acting" leader is often the most exciting moment in the career of a generally sub-par politician. It gives a taste of power to dull individuals who would otherwise never enjoy it. Personally, I have always found it interesting that most countries assign the duties of "second in command" to a rather inconsequential office in the government, though presumably this is done to ensure that in times of crisis the acting president is not an overly ambitious individual.

Sometimes politicians don't like being saddled with the label of "acting" however. New Jersey had an acting governor named Richard Codey who served for over a year. He thought that was long enough to count as a "full" governor so he successfully lobbied the legislature to amend the state constitution. It now declares that any acting governor who serves for over sixth months will be recorded without the "acting" prefix.

Serbia and Madagascar

2007-01-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

The calming down of Madagascar

Marc Ravalomanana, the President of Madagascar (pictured here) was sworn in for his second term on Friday. On Saturday he nominated General Charles Rabemananjara, the Army Chief of Staff, as his new prime minister.

Madagascar used to be home to one of the most unusual political situations in the world- a country with two presidents.

It started in 2001 when Mr. Ravalomanana won an election, beating the longtime dictator Admiral Didier Ratsiraka, who had been in power more or less continuously since 1975. But dictators do not go easily, and Mr. Ratsiraka refused to step down. And neither did the other guy. The extreme stubbornness of both men eventually resulted in them both declaring themselves president, and both forming governments. Said the Guardian at the time, "the impasse has left the island with two presidents, two cabinets, two central bank directors, two capitals - and one suffering population."

The madness of two governments continued for about a year, and there was something of a low-intensity civil war between the forces of the two presidents. Admiral Ratsiraka eventually gave up, and fled into exile in France. Ravalomanana was re-elected as sole president in December.

The re-fascisization of Serbia

Serbia is one of the world's newest countries; it broke up with Montenegro in June of last year. Yesterday the nation held its first parliamentary elections since independence.

Historically the Serbians have been a very difficult people to deal with, and their tendency towards extreme nationalism has caused a lot of problems over the last 100 years, from the murder of Franz Ferdinand to the wars of the late 1990's over the status of Kosovo. In recent years their ambitions had been curbed somewhat by the fact that they'd been forced to participate in mutli-ethnic states, first in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and then in the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro. But now that they're all by themselves, they can be as radical as they want to be, and no longer have to compromise with anyone.

And that's partially what seems to be reflected in the result of yesterday's election. The most votes went to the self-declared "Radical Party," who will now hold the plurality of seats in the Serbian reichstag. The party is described as being "extreme right," and was one of the parliamentary coalition partners of the late Sloban Milosevic during his time in power. People forget that Milosevic was democratically elected.

The Radical Party used to be led by Milosevic's vice president, but he was arrested in 2003 and is currently on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity. So now the acting leader is Milosevic's other vice president, Tomislav Nikolić (seen here). He will likely become the new prime minister of Serbia now, unless the other parties in the parliament form some sort of elaborate coalition to keep him out of power.

The Last Queen of France

2007-01-20T00:32:00.000-08:00

Here's a bizarre little story that has captivated the imaginations of two nations over the last week. Apparently, in 1956 the Prime Minister of France, Guy Mollet, traveled to London to meet with the British PM. The reason? The Frenchies were evidently toying with the idea of "merging" Britain and France into one giant super-nation. Including, according to the Guardian, "the possibility of the Queen becoming the French head of state."

But the plan was rejected for the lunacy it was. Quietly, it seems, for no one really heard about the matter until now. Mollet left office nine months later, and General De Gaulle came to power shortly after.

Obviously what makes the story so odd is that it contradicts everything we know about French pride. Previously, suggestions of merging France and England was something only the English ever talked about in moments of extreme opportunism. Like during the year 1940, when Churchill cynically offered the French government the opportunity to merge rather than face Nazi conquest. The French refused- obviously- seeing the Germans as the lesser of two evils. During the subsequent collaboratist Vichy government, pro-Nazi foreign policy would be justified as a way to undermine Britain imperialism.

Regardless, if Mollet's plan had gone through, and Elizabeth the Second had become Queen of France, she would have not been the first British monarch to enjoy such a title. Indeed, every single British monarch from 1337 to 1801 used the tag "King of France" as one of their many titles. The British did control some French land in the early 15th Century, but lost all of it following the conclusion of the 100 Years War. Their monarchs kept the "King of France" title anyway, just to be stubborn. The charade was only dropped after Britain and Ireland merged at the turn of the 19th Century.

The Current King

Presently, there are four men who all claim to be the king of France.

Henri the Seventh (born 1933) is the heir to the Capet family, them being the ones who got their heads chopped off during the revolution. He was born in Belgium, but moved to France in the 1950's after the French government abolished a law that had previously banned members of the exiled royal family from returning to the country. He's not particularly high-profile, but people generally know who he is, and the French tabloids enjoy covering the antics of his dysfunctional family. He tried to get elected to the European parliament in 2004 but failed.

Louis the Twentith (born 1974) is the rival claimant to the Capet dynasty. His side of the family claims that he is more legitimate than Henri the 7th for reasons which are too complicated and boring to get into here. He was born in Spain and now lives in Venezuela with his Latino bride. Sometimes he visits France. He's a cousin of the present King of Spain, but the Spanish royal family officially shuns him.

Napoleon the Eighth (born 1950) is the eighth successive Napoleon. Formally, he is Napoleon the first's great-great-great nephew. Politically, he is the most successful of the pretend-kings of France. He once served on a city council and is now trying to get elected to the French parliament.

Carlo Alessandro (1952) is an Italian man distantly related to Napoleon the first. The reason why he's Italian is because the Bonaparte family produced a lot of female heirs in the late 20th Century and they all married foreigners. The family of Napoleon VIII doesn't allow females to assume the "throne," but this side does, hence the conflict today. According to Regnal Chronologies, Carlo's aristocratic Italian family is most famous for the fact that they "once ran the post office of the Holy Roman Empire."

Metapost

2007-01-18T09:33:00.000-08:00

I did not realize until now that I had my blog set to "not allow" anonymous comments. I've changed that now, so if you are keen to respond to something I've written here you no longer need to be a registered Blogger.

Presidential firsts

2007-01-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

French Presidency to achieve some sort of milestone

On Sunday France's leading conservative party- the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire- appointed a man named Nicolas Sarkozy as their candidate for the 2007 French Presidential election. The French socialist party has nominated their own candidate as well, one Ms. Segolene Royal.

One of the two will end up as the next president, and the election of either one will be historic for France in some way. Mssr. Sarkozy, as the name suggests, will be the first French president from a non-French background. His father was an immigrant from Hungary. And of course if Ms. Royal is elected she'll be France's first woman president.

But regardless of who gets elected, the next president of France will still be important in a different way- he or she will be the first president born after the Second World War. France is the last of the G7 nations to achieve this milestone.

At present, Japan, Germany, America, Canada, and the United Kingdom are all ruled by men and women born after 1945. Italy had one baby boom prime minister (Massimo D'Alema, 1998-2000) but the current PM, Romano Prodi, was born in 1939.

American Presidency likely to do so as well

Senator Barak Obama announced he wants to run for President of the United States today. If he gets elected he'll obviously be the first-ever African-American president. If you want to get technical about it, however, he'll actually be the first-ever mixed race president, as his mother was a white woman. Regardless, Obama would also be the first president born in Hawaii (and thus the first president born outside of the continental United States) and the first president with an immigrant parent since Andrew Jackson. Obama's dad was born in Kenya, which has made the senator quite a hero in that country.

Some of America's other leading presidential hopefuls would be interesting "firsts" as well.

If John McCain is elected he, like Obama, will be the first president born outside of the continental United States. But he'll also the first president born outside of the 50 States altogether. McCain was born in the colonially-occupied US Panama Canal Zone of Panama, back when that existed.

If Hillary Clinton wins, she'll be the first woman president, and the first First Lady to become president. This will make the US like most other countries with female leaders, in the sense that Hillary will have come to power partially through her connection to a male relative who was also president. Historically, most female presidents and prime ministers, as well as female governors, have tended to have a father or husband who was also head of state at one time.

If Rudolph Giuliani wins he will technically be the first non Anglo-Saxon president, as he is of Italian descent. Immigrant wise, he'd be less interesting than Obama, but he would still be the first president with immigrant grandparents since Woodrow Wilson.

And then there's good old Mitt Romney. He'd be the first Mormon president, a fact which every media report on him is required to observe in the opening sentence.

Romney has immigrant roots as well, but they are legalistic and complicated. Romney's father was born in Mexico to parents who were US citizens, but they themselves were evidently born in Mexico as well. In the late 19th Century Romney's great-grandparents exiled themselves south of the border to flee the United States and its anti-Mormon ways. The foreign-birth thing caused problems when Romney's father tried to run for president in 1968.

It's obviously early in the US election cycle, but I would say at the moment chances are high that America will elect a president hearty in "first" trivia.

Ecuador? More like Ecua-bore!

2007-01-15T16:09:00.000-08:00

Rafael Correa was sworn in as President of Ecuador today. He's another left-winger, but a slightly more moderate one. So he wore a jacket, but no tie.

Señor Correa is something of a martyr figure in his own way. He used to be minister of finance under the old president, at a time when Ecuador's economic situation was very grim. The president, like many-a third-world leader, believed the solution was to implement sweeping neo-liberal reforms to the economy, with greater free trade, privatization, and co-operation with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Correa opposed this agenda, and was either fired or resigned, depending on whose supporters are telling the story.

Ecuador is easily one of the most unstable Latin American countries. Since 1996 there have been eleven presidents and one coup.

The President of Ecuador wears a sash that says "My power comes from the constitution," which I guess is something they feel the president should be reminded of.

Guestlist

Last week I talked about Daniel Ortega's inaugural guestlist. It seemed pretty impressive at the time, but now seems pitiful compared to the all-star cast Señor Correa was able to wrangle together. He got:

Left-wing presidents of Latin America:

Evo Morales, President of Bolivia
Lula Da Silva, President of Brazil
Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile
Rene Preval, President of Haiti
Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua
Alan Garcia, President of Peru
Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela

Conservaitve presidents of Latin America:

Alvaro Uribe, President of Columbia
Nicanor Duarte, President of Paraguay

Arab presidents:

Mohamed Abdelaziz, President of Western Sahara
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran

Other celebrities:

Felipe, Crown Prince of Spain
Gerard Depardieu, legendary French actor

What a turnout! One guest was particularly controversial. Can you guess who? (Hint: it was not Gerard Depardieu)

Country for sale, by owner

This amusing story came to my attention the other day. I don't know if you've ever heard of "Sealand" before, but it's basically an abandoned WW2-era helipad-type thing located in the North Sea. In the late 1960's this structure was seized by a lunatic Brit and his various unattractive family members, who proceeded to proclaim the cement structure a "sovereign country" and themselves as its "royal family."

And for a while it was all quaint and adorable. They issued phony passports and stamps and made their own website and got into legal battles with the British coastguard and all the rest. But as the years went on, the royal family's interest in Sealand slowly declined and after a while no one was really spending much time there anymore. This is probably why the country caught on fire last year, and why they're so eager to sell it now. Just $977 million.

So who's running Bangladesh?

2007-01-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

Bangladesh is on-record as being one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. According to Transparency International it's ranked 156th out of 163 on the global corruption scale, surpassed only by collapsed warzones like Haiti and Iraq.

This does not go unnoticed in Bangladesh of course, and over the years there have been attempts to cut down on the corruption. As elections were among the country's most corrupt exercises, in 1991 a reform was introduced to make Bangladeshi elections freer and fairer. To insure that the incumbent party would not commit electoral fraud and abuse the tools of government to keep themselves in power, it was decided that during the months leading up to a national election there would be no incumbent party at all. The Prime Minister would resign, and be replaced by an interim, non-partisan caretaker figure, who would in turn ensure that the government would be run in a completely neutral and peaceful manner during the election, and thus in a way that did not favor the ambitions of any one party over another. He would turn over power only when the certified winner of the election was sworn in.

But, sigh, now the main Bangladeshi opposition party is arguing that the incumbent party has managed to corrupt this process too, by stacking the caretaker regime with individuals loyal to themselves. Elections are supposed to be held in the next couple of weeks, but the opposition has already vowed to boycott the vote.

So the scramble has been on to appoint new, more neutral caretakers to run the government. Ones who can hopefully stop outraged partisans from rioting in the streets, which has evidently been happening a lot lately. A state of emergency was declared the other day.

Timeline

The outgoing Prime Minister of Bangladesh stepped down in October. Under normal circumstances, the new caretaker is supposed to be chosen by bi-partisan consensus, but in this case the two parties could not agree. So the President of Bangladesh stepped in and made himself interim prime minister, but this did not go over well. Shockingly, the President is himself a politician, and one who the opposition argued was too closely aligned to the incumbents.

Heeding the cries, the prez. resigned as caretaker prime minister yesterday. The youngest retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court then became acting prime minister automatically, in accordance with the constitution. But he is apparently an old geezer who didn't want the job, so he resigned a few hours later (making him a new candidate for this page).

There was a hope that the perhaps the new prime minister could be someone really cool and heroic, who everyone would love. The president tried to talk the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, the famed Bangladeshi "banker to the poor," into taking the job, but he was wise enough to refuse.

So instead the President appointed the country's second-most beloved economist, a guy named Fakhruddin Ahmed (seen here). He's the former governor of the national bank, and is described by the Agence France-Presse as a "Princeton-educated former World Bank employee." For now, both parties seem to accept him. The elections remain delayed indefinitely, however.

"Dueling Divas"

An interesting thing about Bangladesh is that both of the the main political parties are led by women. Women who really hate each other. I particularly like this quote from a TIME magazine story on the country:

Three years ago former U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried to get the two women to shake hands, but neither could bring herself to even look at the other. At a service for Armed Forces Day two months ago the two women sat on a dais with 14 chairs between them. "God forbid that they should talk and work through some issues," says Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, editor of the Bangladesh Observer.

Who's the worst dictator to escape justice?

2007-01-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

Little more than two weeks after Saddam Hussein's execution, another notoriously murderous former dictator has been dealt a stiff sentence for his bloody regime. At least in theory.

Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was the communist dictator of Ethiopia for 17 years, from 1977 to 1990. He came to power following the assassination of the old dictator, who in turn came to power following the murder of the emperor. It's a shame that Mengistu is so forgotten today because he was easily one of the worst tyrants of the 20th Century. There were widespread purges of political enemies, a brutal civil war to suppress the nationalist ambitions of the now-independent state of Eritrea, as well as traditional communist mangling of the economy and agricultural sector, both of which helped to intensify the damage inflicted by one of Africa's worst famines. His overall death count is usually attributed at anywhere from the high tens of thousands to the low hundreds of thousands, and if you factor in the causalities from the famines, civil war, and forced relocations, he can easily be blamed for presiding over at least a million unjustified deaths.

Mengistu was deposed in 1991 by a rebel coalition led by Meles Zenawi, who remains Prime Minister of Ethiopia to this very day. Ethiopia is still not a very free country under him, but at least it's freer. His government put Mengistu and his inner circle on trial for crimes against humanity in 1994, but the proceedings were notoriously slow and bungled, and took 12 years to finish. Today Mengistu was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 2,000 political enemies in 1978.

But wait! As the Associated Press is quick to point out, the colonel is "unlikely to ever spend a day behind bars." This is because shortly after being deposed Mengistu fled to nearby Zimbabwe, where he was welcomed into a posh exile by that country's Marxist dictator, Robert Mugabe. In the years since then Mr. Mugabe has steadfastly refused to extradite Mengistu to face trial, and still refuses to do so, even now that Mengistu is a convicted felon. As Human Rights Watch quipped, "one dictator is protecting another."

Why I don't like Wikipedia

As an aside, I would like to point out just what a raging double-standard in the popular culture there seems to be when it comes to the damnation of dictators. There are some dictators we all remember and hate, while others we quickly forget, or never cared about in the first place.

This may change in the coming days, but as I write this Colonel Mengistu's article on Wikipedia is rather pitiful. It's short, incomplete, and superficial. Only 2,000 words in all. By contrast, when we look at the article for the late General Pinochet of Chile, we see an article over 3,700 words long, with lots of historical background, political analysis, footnotes, links, pictures, etc. In addition, there are several other 2,000+ word articles on the site detailing other aspects of Pinochet's dictatorial career, including his 1973 coup, "Chile under Pinochet," and his subsequent arrest and trial.

Now if we consult a notoriously fair and balanced source of information, such as the "Wonderful World" segment of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, we can see that Pinochet is at most responsible for the death of 5,000 Chileans. Comparatively speaking, this makes him a rather small fish in the global context, and an especially small fish compared to someone like Mengistu who murdered upwards of three times that number over a shorter period of time.

Yet in the popular culture and the popular imagination of much of the world, it is Pinochet who is remembered as this uniquely horrible monster- one of the worst dictators of all time. In his later years people hated Pinochet so much he couldn't even travel freely because every country in the world wanted to arrest him.

Far be it for me to engage in shallow partisan bashing, but I honestly believe that this particular phenomenon is all the left's fault. Left-wingers always had a particularly intense animosity towards Pinochet for mostly ideological reasons. They hated the fact that he deposed a socialist, they hated that he was an ultra-capitalist right-winger, and they hated that he was supported by Nixon and Kissinger. As he embodied a lot of things the leftist set wanted to rally against, Pinochet's evils became greatly exaggerated for partisan reasons.

The left-wing obsession with Pinochet continued years after he left office, and it continues to play out to this day in sites like Wikipedia, where critics from the United States and elsewhere slavishly seek to research, chronicle, and document every single obscenity perpetuated by his regime. The western media played along with much of this as well, and as a result today the "conventional wisdom" raises us to believe that Pinochet was one of the worst tyrants of the last 100 years.

Pinochet was a egotistical sadist whose regime committed many vicious crimes- of that there can be no doubt. But he will ultimately be little more than a footnote to history, one of many Latin American military despots presiding in an era rife with them. Mengistu was one of many African despots, but his regime was uniquely gruesome, and- in the words of his own country- genocidal on a scale that was extreme even by continential standards. It is an insult to our collective morality, as well as his victims, that we will never recognize him as such.

News relating to Austria

In less polemic news, Alfred Gusenbauer was sworn in as Chancellor of Austria today. He's yet another European social democrat presiding over a weak coalition government resulting from an indecisive election.

Austria is the only country other than Germany that has a "chancellor" as their head of government. Here we see Herr Gusenbauer being ratified by the country's figurehead president.

A good day for the left in Latin America

2007-01-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

Chavistas March Forward

Hugo Chavez was sworn in for his third consecutive term as President of Venezuela today.

One of his first major announcements following the inauguration was a call for legislators to amend the constitution so he can run again. Under the present Venezuelan constitution the president is limited to a maximum of three six-year terms. Chavez wants "unlimited" terms, so he can stay in office well beyond his current 2013 deadline. He also wants the Congress to give him the power to enact laws without their consent, or in other words, rule by decree.

People accuse Chavez of being a communist tyrant in the making, and gestures like this don't do much to disprove it.

Chavez has also promised to further entrench socialism in his second term, with the first gesture being the complete nationalization of the country's telephone and electric companies. But these are matters for the higher-brow political commentators to discuss, so we won't get into it here. If you are interested in reading a critique of Chavez from a Venezuelan perspective, I encourage you to read the fine blog "Caracas Chronicles" which offers highly readable commentary on Venezuelan politics (in English!).

Sandinistas too

Chavez did not have much time to get settled after his swearing in, however. He had to high-tail it out of Venezuela and head over to Nicaragua, where his friend was getting sworn in as president of that country. Chavez showed up late, but the Nicaraguans were nice enough to delay the entire ceremony for him. Which just shows where the affinities of the new regime rest.

The new president of Nicaragua is actually the old president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega. His election in November was one of the most dramatic and controversial political comebacks in history.

In 1979 Ortega led a broad-based coup against the regime of the former Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza. Though Ortega himself was a Marxist, his junta was initially non-partisan, and consisted of a variety of high-profile anti-Somoza dissidents. But as the years went on Ortega consolidated more and more power for himself (he upgraded from "junta co-ordinator" to president in 1985 and wrote a new constitution in 1987), and moved the Nicaraguan government in a radical leftist, Cuban-style direction. This prompted the breakdown of his alliance, and eventually led to full-on civil war between Ortega-led Marxist militias (the "Sandinistas") and armed gangs of political dissidents (the "Contras").

This being the Cold War, the United States backed the dissidents, while the Cubans and Soviets supported Ortega's people. Thousands died in the violence, and under pressure Ortega held presidential elections in 1990, which he lost to one of his former junta members, Violeta Chamorro.

Ortega did not go quietly into the night, however. He restructured his Sandinistas into a democratic political party and led an effective political opposition to the Chamorro government, and her two successors. The Sandinistas held the plurality of seats in the Nicaraguan parliament for much of the 1990-2006 period, which ensured continued influence in the lawmaking process. Ortega himself contested every presidential election, and though he was never successful, he remained a popular figure and always had a strong showing.

Then in November of 2006 Ortega's dream finally came true, and he was narrowly elected back to the presidency with 38% of the popular vote.

All this puts the Bush administration in a weird place. Nicaragua and the US are now close allies, but how do you justify friendly relations with a president whom Republicans previously spent untold millions trying to overthrow? Mainstream observers are now playing up Ortega's newfound "moderation." Since 1990, the man has slowly evolved towards the political center, becoming less of a Castroite Marxist and more of a pragmatic social democrat. He seems to have had something of a religious awakening as well. A few months ago his party supported a super-strict anti-abortion bill, with terms far harsher than anything that even the most fanatical Republican could ever hope of getting away with.

A good line summarizing the careers of both Chavez and Ortega can be found in this article by the UK Guardian:

Mr Chavez, a social democrat turned US-bashing communist revolutionary, had a plane waiting to whisk him to the Nicaraguan capital to congratulate Mr Ortega, a US-bashing communist revolutionary turned social democrat.

Trivia time

1. Ortega's homies

One fun thing about inaugurations is that they tend to attract a high-profile audience. Along with Chavez, Ortega managed to get a number of heads of state and almost-heads of state to attend his big to-do. Each guest projects his own symbolic relevance:

Felipe, Crown Prince of Spain- historic friendship, Felipe is the heir to the throne of the nation that originally colonized Nicaragua.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia- ideological allies, showing left-wing solidarity across the continent

President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan- Nicaragua is one of about two dozen small countries that recognizes the government of Taiwan as the legitimate government of China. For this, the Taiwanese are eternally grateful.

2. Pinko tide

With Ortega now formally in power, the much ballyhooed leftist sweep of Latin America continues. Only a couple countries in that part of the world are still ruled by center-right parties, while all the most important ones remain firmly in the hands of left-wingers of varying stripes.

I've made a handy map which charts who's ruled by who, which you can see at the right here. The map will stay static for a little while, there aren't going to be any presidential elections in Latin America until the fall of 2007.

3. The end of neckties

For as long as there have been neckties there have been those who have denounced them as stuffy, uncomfortable symbols of snobbishness and corporate conformity. As more and more super-populist anti-establishment men continue to take power around the world, we are beginning to witness a rather interesting revolution in political dress.

At one time, it would have gone without saying that a Latin American president would wear a solemn suit and tie ensemble to his national inauguration. But Ortega just wore a loose white dress shirt and slacks, as you can see in the photo above. 30 years ago that would have been the height of disrespect, but today such under-dressing just shows off what a true man of the people you are.

Ortega will join the ranks of other notable non-tie wearing world leaders around the globe, including:

From the country of Borat...

2007-01-08T13:50:00.000-08:00

The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan resigned today because the president had grown tired of him. In many authoritarian countries the prime minister is merely a lackey of the dictator, a sort of bureaucrat-in-chief with few political responsibilities other than enforcing the president's will. And Kazakhstan is no different. As the Associated Press tells us, the Kazakhstani president "regularly replaces his prime ministers as he tries to secure his position and balance interests of various powerful elite groups." In the 15 years since Kazakhstan separated from the Soviet Union they've gone through six prime ministers in all.

Only one president though. Since 1989 Kazakhstan has been ruled by Nursultan Nazarbayev (pictured here looking particularly radiant). It's the usual story, he used to run the local wing of the Communist Party when Kazakhstan was still a Soviet province, then when they broke away he seamlessly transitioned into the president of an independent country. Much like the late Mr. Turkmenbashi next door.

In recent years many of "the 'stans" have witnessed peaceful democratic revolutions which have deposed several of these former Communist czars-cum-presidents. There was the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and most famously of all, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. This democratic tide has proven to be something of a double-edged sword, however. As unrest sweeps the former Bloc, the remaining dictators are resorting to increasingly harsh clampdowns to ensure that the spread doesn't cross their borders. The rulers of Kazakhstan, along with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, can now legitimately justify the widespread jailing of dissidents and censorship of media in a way they never could before.

President Nazarbayev is expected to appoint a new prime minister shortly.

Turkmenistan in transition

2007-01-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

Next to Kim Jong Il, there was no dictator the world loved to hate more than Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. The grotesquely eccentric president of Turkemenistan was known across the planet chiefly for his panache for the absurd, building colossal golden statutes of himself, outlawing ballet, and renaming bread after his dead mother, among other things.

But now he's dead, and the party is over. In his place, the nation's former health minister, the painfully named Gubanguly Berdymukhammedov (seen at right) has awkwardly assumed the presidency. The constitution had to be changed twice to allow it, but that's the way Turkmenistan works.

Mr. Berdymukhammedov was deputy prime minister under Turkmenbashi (who was both president and prime minister, naturally) yet few people seem to have heard of him until now. Articles from western journalists that attempt to profile the man make liberal use of words like "unknown" and "mysterious," such as this one in Forbes, "Turkmenistan's new leader little-known."

Other than the fact that he was health minister for one of the world's most unhealthy nations, one thing we do know about the new president is that he managed to have a rather lengthy career in Turkmenbashi's cabinet without ever being fired or murdered. This suggests the former dictator must have had an unusually high level of affinity for him, and according to this blogger, people in eastern Europe are now gossiping that Berdymukhammedov may be Turkmenbashi's illegitimate bastard-child.

Anyway, Turkmenistan has now decided that they're going to go through the motions of a presidential election, tentatively scheduled for February 11. Along with Berdymukhammedov, five candidates from Turkmenistan's only legal political party have been approved. An opposition guy apparently wanted to run too, but it looks like they've taken care of him in a hurry.

Lest we get too excited, Radio Free Europe gives us a history of elections in Turkmenistan:

"Since gaining independence in 1991, Turkmenistan held one presidential election, in June 1992, when President Niyazov ran unopposed and officially received 99.5 percent of the vote."

Africans

2007-01-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

So who's running Somalia?

Whenever Somalia is in the news, as it has been a fair bit recently, the media is always quick to inform us that the country "has no central government." Ever since the fall of the longtime dictator Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has been a mess of war, chaos, and anarchy.

But that doesn't mean the country has no politicians! There was an interesting editorial in the National Post today explaining how the region of Africa our atlases recognize as the single country of "Somalia" is actually governed by three distinct regimes.

They are:

#1- The Transitional Federal Government of the Republic of Somalia is a gang of politicians, mostly western-educated and funded, who, in 2004, created a pluralistic, peaceful government-in-exile with the hope that they may one day assume full control of their country. The TFG has a 275-member parliament with appointed representatives of all of Somalia's major tribes.

In October of 2004 this transitional parliament appointed former warlord Abdullahi Yusuf as their president. He was inaugurated in Kenya, and finally went back to Somalia in June of 2005.

Initially the transitional government was regarded as a bit of a joke. The UN recognized it as the legitimate government of Somalia, but everyone knew they had little influence over the country itself. Very few countries have diplomatic relations with Mr. Yusuf's gang. Most are satisfied to just declare that Somalia "has no government" and leave it at that. Perhaps they are a bit fatigued. According to the CIA, the TFG is the 15th consecutive attempt at establishing an inclusive, interim Somali government since 1991.

Things have changed recently, however. Ethiopia invaded Somalia last month, and drove a gang of Islamist warlords, known as the Islamic Courts Union, out of the capital city. The Ethiopians back the TFG, and on December 30 President Yusuf was escorted into the capital as well. He hopes to stay as long as possible, and start consolidating control, but the historical track record of such endeavors is not good.

#2- Somaliland is not a theme-park, but rather the largest, and most successful independent regime operating within the former Somalia.

Before Somalia became an independent country in 1960, it was two separate colonies, one British, one Italian. The two regions had a tense relationship even after the merger, however, and following the political breakdown in 1991, the former "British Somaliland" declared itself independent.

There have been three presidents of this new "Republic of Somaliland." The current one is Dahir Riyale Kahin. Unlike the rest of the country, Somaliland is actually a fairly peaceful and cohesive place. Freedom House notes that Mr. Kahim's 2003 election was declared to be "free and fair" by international observers. They also have a multi-party legislature.

But the international community believes Somali unity is what's most important, and as a result Mr. Kahim and his government are ignored by most of the world and have diplomatic relations with no one.

#3- Puntland is the other major centrally-governed territory of Somalia, but in contrast to Somaliland, it's a much more typical example of what you would expect a rebel-run territory to be like. In 1998 members of Somalia's Darod tribe declared their Puntland region to be an "autonomous state" within a unified Somalia, and since then it's successfully been governed more or less independently. Though I often think "independent from what?"

The President of Puntland is General Adde Musse. Their government is not democratic at all, and is controlled entirely by tribal elders and military warlords. General Musse is the second-ever president, the first one was Abdullahi Yusuf, who you may remember is now the leader of the transitional government. Yusuf ran Puntland like a tyrant, refusing to step down after losing an election, and using mercenary forces to stay in power. This is why he is a fairly controversial fellow today, and why some are skeptical as to whether or not he is truly the best guy to lead Somalia into a bright and sunny tomorrow.

State funeral watch

Marais Viljoen, the man who was President of South Africa from 1979 to 1984 died yesterday at age 91. If you've never heard of him before it's because he ruled during a period in which the South African presidency was a powerless, ceremonial office. The position was created in 1961 to replace the office of Governor General when the country separated from the British crown and became a republic. Mr. Viljoen is historically notable because he was the last president of this sort. In 1984 Prime Minister P.W. Botha dramatically overhauled the South African constitution, merging the positions of PM and President into a single, executive presidency which he then assumed himself.

Botha died last year, which means there are now only three living presidents of South Africa left, whom you can see at the right.

The first fresh faces of two-thousand and seven

2007-01-04T23:25:00.000-08:00

United States- Women edge closer to the presidency

Today is inauguration week in the United States, meaning various politicians of all stripes are being sworn into office.

Most notable of these is of course Nancy Pelosi, who is now America's first-ever female Speaker of the House of Representatives. Unlike many other countries, where the House Speaker is often an unknown, unimportant politician who does little more than call roll and tell people to sit down, in the US the Speaker is the de facto leader of the legislative branch. A deeply partisan figure, he or she is perhaps the closest thing the United States has to a Prime Minister.

As the first woman Speaker, Pelosi is now also the highest-ever ranking female in the US order of presidential succession, the legal list which chronicles in what order people assume the presidency following the death of both Bush and Cheney. Previously, the highest-ranking woman in American history had been Secretary of State Condi Rice, at position number four. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright was never in the order of succession because she was an immigrant, and thus banned from assuming the presidency.

Inauguration week around the world

A number of other leaders have come to power in the first few days of the new year, too.

Ban Ki-Moon, the former South Korean foreign minister, has now formally assumed office as Secretary General of the United Nations. He was sworn in on New Year's day.

So was Micheline Calmy-Rey, the new President of Switzerland. She is that country's second-ever female president, and may also win the prize for most garish hairstyle presently worn by a world leader.

The Swiss president holds office for exactly one year, and the job rotates between cabinet ministers. As the Swiss government prides itself on collective decision-making, the president is not a very powerful individual. "The first among equals" as they say. If you can speak French, check out President Calmy-Rey's new snappy website.

With Switzerland now under female-rule, the total number of countries with female leaders is now 13. According to my estimates, this is the most female leaders the world has ever had, but it's happened twice before. If one more comes to power, now that will be truly unprecedented.

So who's running Fiji?

The aftermath of Fiji's December 5th military coup continues to be worked out at the political level.

Yesterday, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who had been serving as the nation's military head of state since the coup, agreed to cede the presidency of Fiji back to Ratu Josefa Iloilo, the man he deposed.

CNN describes President Iloilo as "an ageing and ailing figurehead who is rarely seen in public." But true power will not rest with him, of course. In exchange for being restored, Iloilo agreed to appoint the Commodore (right) as Prime Minister, and he was sworn in today. "In all things, I will be a true and faithful prime minister," quipped the unelected military despot.

He's "called for" a return to democracy and free elections, but as usual, no specific dates have been given.