Domestic Politics Archive

It all started with an accusation of rape. In early February, the Senegalese press reported that a young woman who works at a massage parlor in Dakar had filed a complaint against Ousmane Sonko, a prominent opposition leader and a member of parliament, accusing him of raping her and threatening her life. On hearing the news, Sonko, who came in third in the country’s last presidential election in 2019, cried conspiracy, accusing Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, of fabricating the claim in order to destroy his political career and send him to prison. As a member of parliament, Sonko was in […]

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Managing Editor Frederick Deknatel highlights a major unfolding story in the Middle East, while curating some of the best news and analysis from the region. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive Middle East Memo by email every week. A former crown prince is under house arrest, accused of a plot to apparently destabilize the kingdom. He denies all that and has instead vowed to defy the orders to keep him quiet at home. He has already shared one video with the media and another audio message to his supporters online, declaring his innocence and […]

LIMA, Peru—In a country long plagued by political malfeasance, jaded Peruvians like to say that they usually cast their ballot for the “least bad” candidate. Now, as Peru staggers toward an April 11 general election, voters—battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic collapse and five years of political turmoil—seem unable to decide which of the 18 largely unconvincing presidential candidates that might be. Yonhy Lescano, the center-left frontrunner, barely breaks into double digits in opinion polls, while the leading five candidates’ combined support does not hit 50 percent. These are unprecedentedly low numbers, even for a society that has long viewed […]

Before a recent spike in COVID-19 cases, Chile was being lauded in the international press for its remarkable progress in vaccinating its population against the coronavirus. Soaring caseloads in recent weeks have dampened that narrative of success, but the fact remains that this small, relatively well-off Latin American nation is moving faster to inoculate its citizens than almost any other country in the world. Meanwhile, nearby Paraguay, where scarce shots generated public outrage against the government’s handling of the pandemic, has emerged in the media as a poster child of Latin America’s poor performers. Both countries share common features with […]

Nigeria is once again facing a challenge that has grown all too familiar: children in peril. Kidnappings first gained international prominence in 2014, when the jihadist group Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from their boarding school in the northeastern town of Chibok. Despite a global media campaign to urge their safe return, #BringBackOurGirls, more than 100 of them are still missing today. Many more children have been abducted since then—and the trend could get even worse. Over the past four months, armed groups have raided boarding schools and kidnapped more than 650 students. In perhaps the most prominent of these […]

LA PAZ, Bolivia—“The biggest change is a mental one,” Guido Montano, one half of Bolivia’s first-ever same-sex civil union, told me when I asked him recently how his life had changed since he and his longtime partner, David Aruquipa, won a two-year legal battle to register their union last December. “It may seem a vague idea in day-to-day life,” he said, “but I just immediately sensed that we have more rights.” That vague idea suddenly became much more real in January, when both men contracted COVID-19, forcing them to contemplate a worst-case scenario. “With David really ill, the fact that […]

Before Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister, the longest in Israel’s history, Israelis delineated their parties’ political contours on the basis of ideology. That started changing as Netanyahu’s hold on power stretched over the years, despite him acting in ways that some found offensive, counterproductive and possibly criminal. He has now fully reframed Israel’s political divisions, which became starkly apparent in the most recent election, the country’s fourth in just two years. Traditionally, Israelis differentiated their political views by roughly categorizing themselves and their parties between right and left. As in many other countries, the distinction is based on […]