Domestic Politics Archive

HONG KONG — The sight this weekend of an emotional Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon surveying the devastation wreaked by the Sichuan earthquake should allow the rest of the world to breath a collective sigh of relief. Gone was the Beijing-manufactured nationalistic nonsense that had been gaining in fiery strength with every leg of the Olympic torch relay. Instead, the human face of China was visible, humbled by a tragedy inflicted with a brute force that only mother nature is capable of delivering. It wasn’t always like that. Initial offers of help for quake victims […]

WASHINGTON D.C. – Financial, FATA and fuel security concerns dominated Congressional foreign policy committee meetings this week – no surprise, given the dismal economic and political news simultaneously coming out of Wall Street and Islamabad. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs began the week with a hearing to determine the full impact of sovereign wealth funds and, according to Chairman Howard L. Berman, “the power that these massive funds may have over U.S. national security interests.” But contrary to Berman’s opening remarks, the experts seemed to agree that SWFs are symptomatic of U.S. economic downturn, if not a changing world […]

On the basis of preliminary returns and exit polls, President Mikheil Saakashvili declared an overwhelming victory for his party in yesterday’s legislative elections in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Many observers had hoped that the vote would end the protracted and vicious political infighting that has characterized Georgian politics in recent years, but Saakashvili’s opponents immediately contested his claim. A prominent opposition leader, David Gamkrelidze, accused the government of the incumbent president of falsifying the results and called for new legislative elections. Nine political parties and three blocs competed for representation in the 150-member parliament. Half of the seats […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Ten years after the fall of Dictator Suharto, is Indonesia’s democracy a glass half full or half empty? If one looks only at the news headlines that often portray the archipelagic country as a hotbed of terrorists, radical Islamists and corrupt politicians, it would seem that things have worsened since the student-led Reformasi movement forced Suharto to relinquish the power he had held for the past 32 years. That was 10 years ago, on May 21, 1998. Skeptics also point out that Indonesians have little trust in political parties, and that the country’s political and business elite […]

KAMPALA, Uganda — Denmark’s Ambassador to Uganda was away when his wife looked out the window and saw a young man fall from the sky and land on her garden. She made a frantic call to her husband, Stig Barlyng, who immediately sped home to his residence in a posh suburb in Kampala. But by the time Barlyng arrived home, the guards from the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) headquarters next door had already overpowered Barlyng’s guard and recaptured their escapee. “I went next door and I started yelling a bit, to put it mildly,” recalls Barlyng, who is months […]

TORREÓN, Mexico — The Mexican political class doesn’t agree on much, but no one denies that the country’s political left today is a hopeless mess. Every day brings a fresh embarrassment, a new descent into the bizarre. The present state of affairs is all the more conspicuous given the heights to which the left rose less than two short years ago. Ironically, the decline can be traced to the very man who almost lifted the left into the presidency. As 2006 dawned, everything was gangbusters for the darling of the Mexican left, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The ex-mayor of Mexico […]

CAIRO, Egypt — On Sunday, May 4, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak celebrated his 80th birthday. On the front pages of government-owned newspapers, oversized pictures of the president were displayed with an extensive list of his accomplishments since acquiring power from the late Answar Sadat in 1981. Nevertheless, on that same bright, humid morning, the presence of five olive-green riot patrol vehicles parked just a few feet from one of Cairo’s busiest squares, Talat Al Harb, attested that all is not well in Mubarak’s domain. Inside the police vehicle, officers with black uniforms and matching hats sat yawning and smoking cigarettes […]

PARIS — One year to the day after his election as president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy strikes an increasingly lonely figure on the French political scene. Having referred to himself as the “buying power president” to emphasize his goal of increasing disposable income, he has instead become the object of a nationwide case of buyer’s remorse. His popularity has plummeted in opinion polls, and in the absence of any true political opposition (outside of an increasingly hostile press), he faces growing disenchantment within his own UMP majority. In a country where politics is a blood sport, and where the only […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia —When he took office one year ago, Irwandi Yusuf knew his job was going to be tough. And a little more than one year later, over a coffee in his office in Banda Aceh, he acknowledged that it is not getting any easier. “I know the job better now, but my support base is getting more and more disobedient,” he said. Irwandi is the first directly elected governor of Aceh, the once war-torn province of Indonesia and the area worst hit by the December 2004 tsunami. He was elected in December 2006 with almost 40 percent of the […]

On Jan. 20, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will experience its first presidential transition. Having recently celebrated its fifth anniversary in March, the Department has operated only under the Bush administration. Last year, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee prepared a report charging that, “One of the continuing problems [of DHS] appears to be the over politicization of the top rank of Department management.” The authors warned that, “This could lead to heightened vulnerability to terrorist attack.” Although denying the politicization charge, Paul A. Schneider, Acting DHS deputy secretary, concurred that “major terrorist attacks, both here and […]

TOKYO — Next week’s scheduled visit to Japan by Chinese President Hu Jintao is the latest evidence of a continuing thaw in the two countries’ relations, which only three years ago were decidedly icy. The Japan-China relationship reached a low point in April 2005, when thousands of Chinese across the country, outraged by Japan’s approval of textbooks that critics say played down Japanese aggression in World War II, joined a series of anti-Japan protests. Some of the protests turned violent, with attacks on shops selling Japanese products and the stoning of Japanese consulates. “Things were pretty bad,” said Maria Hsia […]

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Promises of a war on drugs by Thailand’s new government had many Thais fearing a replay of the heavy-handed 2003 anti-drug campaign that saw the deaths of almost 3,000 people. So far, however, the new war has been a restrained affair, revealing much about the political strength of Thailand’s People’s Power Party-led government. The push for carrying out a second campaign against illicit drugs came from Thailand’s new interior minister, Chalerm Yabumrung, who had campaigned on the issue. In the wake of his party’s December 2007 election victory and with the approval of Prime Minister Samak […]