Domestic Politics Archive

The rule of law remains fragile in Latin America, and, once undermined, it is difficult to re-establish. That has been the painful lesson learned by Honduras since the legally dubious 2009 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, an event that U.S. diplomats, at least in leaked cables, have referred to as a coup d’état. And it is one that Paraguay might learn after the abrupt removal of President Fernando Lugo via congressional impeachment last weekend. Ever since the 2009 crisis, Honduras has been dogged by rapidly growing governance deficits and rising lawlessness, driving ever-deeper involvement by U.S. counternarcotics forces in the […]

South Africa’s economy is still in the apartheid era and blacks must wrest control of the continent’s financial and mining powerhouse from the white minority, President Jacob Zuma says at the start of the ANC’s policy conference. World News Videos by NewsLook

Former Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was ousted from power Friday, after an impeachment trial found him guilty of mishandling a deadly clash between land reform protesters and police in the north of the country. Vice President Federico Franco was quickly sworn in as president, with Lugo calling the entire process a “parliamentary coup.” Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, told Trend Lines, “This is not a coup in the traditional sense, because obviously they did not pull out the armed forces, and they at least stayed within the definition of the […]

The sudden death last week of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Nayyif, the heir apparent to King Abdullah, caught many by surprise. But the latest royal shuffle, which sees Prince Salman becoming the new crown prince, and the even bigger transition expected to occur in the near future given the poor health of the 88-year-old king will likely feature far greater continuity and stability than the political transformations occurring in Egypt and other Arab countries. The purported ideological tug-of-war taking place inside the royal family is a central theme of much of the commentary on Saudi succession scenarios, with the “reactionaries” […]

In a victory speech, Egyptian Election winner Mohamed Morsi says his government will respect the country’s commitments to human rights. World News Videos by NewsLook

Paraguay’s ousted leader Fernando Lugo accused lawmakers of carrying out a “parliamentary coup d’etat” to force him from power, as international protests mounted over his abrupt removal. World News Videos by NewsLook

Pakistan’s parliament elected Raja Pervez Ashraf prime minister today, after the Supreme Court disqualified and unseated former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. The high court justices confirmed Gilani’s April conviction for contempt of court over his refusal to request that Switzerland reopen a corruption investigation against Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, as the court had ordered him to do in 2009. Shahab Usto, a lawyer and academic based in Karachi, Pakistan, told Trend Lines that the developments are part of a feud between the country’s executive and judiciary branches that will only worsen in the run-up to general elections, which […]

Less than a month after Nepal’s Constituent Assembly was dissolved following its failure to draft a new constitution despite three extensions, the country’s largest and ruling Maoist party split this week. Discord and delay have characterized the country’s ongoing peace process since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord between the government and Maoist rebels in November 2006. They have now led to a political crisis that has disillusioned citizens and made neighboring India and China edgy. The split in the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist is expected to exacerbate Nepal’s already bumpy transition from a Hindu monarchy to a […]

The early weeks of the Arab uprisings of 2011 led many to believe that the fast-spreading protest movements were ushering in a new age of nonviolent democratic change in the region. Not surprisingly, the exuberant and initially successful uprisings were optimistically labeled the “Arab Spring.” Events have since unfolded in a much less utopian fashion. The early chapters, as we now know, represented just one phase of what would become a complicated process, full of detours, bloodshed and Machiavellian maneuvers. More recently, the violence in Syria and the blatantly anti-democratic developments in Egypt have highlighted the sharply different ways in […]

The elections in Egypt are over. Their conclusion marks the passing not only of Egypt’s democratic experiment but also of a grand opportunity to confront larger questions regarding Islam and society. As one of the more able chroniclers of the aborted Egyptian revolution puts it, what started with “one hell of a bang” is ending with a whimper. First, the presidential election’s wide-open first round left voters with two candidates, Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, who together deflated whatever enthusiasm most Egyptians still had for democracy. Morsi was the second-choice candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whose popularity in […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series that uses current trends in the Chinese political economy to forecast the outcomes and implications for China under the fifth generation of Communist Party leadership. Part I examined a best-case scenario. Part II examines a worst-case scenario. SHANGHAI — China’s fifth-generation leadership cadre will assume office later this year at a critical and perilous juncture in the country’s socio-economic development. They do so against a backdrop of weak global economic growth and growing geopolitical uncertainty in North Korea, Iran and multiple Central Asian states. Moreover, the U.S. is on a […]

Suicide car bombers attacked three churches in northern Nigeria over the weekend, killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens more. The attacks, for which Boko Haram has claimed responsibility, sparked reprisal killings, while also focusing international attention on the religious tensions in the West African country split between a Muslim-majority north and a Christian-majority south. Zachary Warner, a research analyst in Africana Studies at Bowdoin College, told Trend Lines that it is important to understand these attacks as part of a broader battle for control of the public space, which includes social practices, morality and governance, in northern Nigeria […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series that uses current trends in the Chinese political economy to forecast the outcomes and implications for China under the fifth generation of Communist Party leadership. Part I examines a best-case scenario. Part II will examine a worst-case scenario. SHANGHAI — As China approaches its once-a-decade senior leadership transition, structural weaknesses in the country’s economic model are becoming more apparent, even as the momentum surrounding progressive reforms appears to be incrementally increasing. A best-case scenario for China under the fifth-generation Communist Party leadership assumes a continuation of both trends, with the […]

Stratfor Vice President of Strategic Intelligence Reva Bhalla explains how the Egyptian political transition is affecting its relationship with Israel. World News Videos by NewsLook

Mauritania, and its periodic bouts of political instability, has important implications for the trajectory of secret U.S. military operations in Africa, as a recent article by Craig Whitlock in the Washington Post shows. American spy planes have flown out of Mauritania on and off for several years, but politics has sometimes constrained America’s role there. In 2008, for instance, a coup in Mauritania “forced Washington to suspend relations and end the surveillance,” Whitlock writes. Today, Mauritania’s potential significance to the U.S. military is increasing. In neighboring Mali, torn apart by a civil war since January, the Islamist group Ansar al […]

France’s Socialist Party has won a majority in parliamentary run-off elections, while the far-right Front National secured its first seats since 1980s. World News Videos by NewsLook

For the revolutionaries who launched the Egyptian uprising, and for voters anxious about their country’s future, the final hours leading up to this weekend’s runoff presidential election in Egypt have become a contest of fears. The euphoria of revolution, that feeling that anything was possible, has been replaced by a searing pressure: the need to decide which is the worse of two bad options. The first round of voting left Egyptians with the choice of Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ahmed Shafiq, a former general who played an important role in the regime that revolutionaries sought […]