Vladimir Putin’s election campaign manager has attacked Russian president Dmitry Medvedev for failing to support his premier’s election campaign, and dismissed criticism of a decision to prevent a liberal opposition leader from contesting the March 4th ballot.
The Kremlin’s media managers made “a tactical retreat” in the wake of the democratic opposition’s resurgence, even allowing critical voices to [READ MORE]
The Arab world’s transitional states desperately need economic assistance and investment, the World Economic Forum heard today. The “cost of the transition is much, much more than anticipated,” said one government minister.
But plans to increase US assistance risk being jeopardized by the Egyptian government’s attack on pro-democracy NGOs, said a US government official.
The groups’ [READ MORE]
Russian democrats have denounced the election authorities’ move to bar liberal opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky from contesting March’s presidential election.
The decision confirms that the Kremlin’s remains committed to maintaining its “managed democracy” rather than initiating reform, analysts suggest.
“This significantly weakens a list of candidates that has already been made artificially narrow and turns the election into a joke,” [READ MORE]
Cubans organized demonstrations and vigils across the island this week in honor of Wilman Villar Mendoza (left), an imprisoned dissident who died this week following a 51-day hunger strike.
The Communist authorities released many political prisoners last year in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church, following which most [READ MORE]
Has Venezuela’s notoriously fractured opposition not only found a candidate around whom it can unite, but one who can beat the incumbent?
“Incumbents in Latin America rarely lose reelection bids,” notes Michael Penfold, an Associate Professor at the Institute for Higher Administrative Studies in Caracas. “In the last [READ MORE]
Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s Centennial Meeting
‘Whither the Arab Spring?’
Speakers (above, left to right): Elliott Abrams, Former Assistant Secretary of State for UN affairs, Human Rights, and Latin America; Carl Gershman, President, National Endowment for Democracy; Ambassador Martin Indyk, Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Vice President and [READ MORE]
As tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to mark the first anniversary of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, the political fissures between former allies was all to evident as Islamists and liberals ‘faced off’ in fierce disputes over the subsequent transition.
The demonstration “turned into a contest ……between Islamists and other activists over [READ MORE]
Is Ecuadorean democracy the latest victim of the resource curse?
Record oil revenues are fuelling Ecuador’s ‘authoritarian creep’ and bolstering the populist appeal of President Rafael Correa.
“A doubling in public spending under Correa adheres to a formula that has also aided the political longevity of his leftist allies Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina [READ MORE]
As thousands assembled in Tahrir Square today for the first anniversary of the revolt that ousted Hosni Mubarak, it appeared that Mubarakism was alive and well – in Washington as well as Cairo.
The familiar refrain that Egypt’s authoritarian forces are the only reliable bulwark against an Islamist takeover is re-emerging (if it ever really went away).
According [READ MORE]
Libya’s transitional authorities are struggling to overcome the legacy of autocratic rule, a senior United Nations official said today, as fresh violence broke out? when Gaddafi loyalists seized control of a provincial town.
The country’s “exciting if unsteady transition” continues to rumble along, some observers suggest, but others offer a bleaker picture.
Weak state institutions [READ MORE]
The Obama administration is planning to accelerate the pace of US aid to Egypt, a senior State Department official said today.
Pro-democracy activists and analysts recently called for US aid to Egypt to be cut or deferred, following government raids on US-based, government-funded non-governmental groups, but the administration is proposing an acceleration of assistance, apparently without conditionality. [READ MORE]
The engagement of emerging democracies is one of the signature themes of the Obama administration’s democracy policy. Yet states like Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and India have diverged from Western democracies on key human rights and [READ MORE]
Does the Kremlin’s vitriolic reaction to the new US envoy’s meeting with opposition activists signal an imminent crackdown? Or do reports that web cameras are being installed in polling stations in a bid to prevent electoral fraud suggest that the government is responding to public criticism?
Have advocates of Arab democracy been “mesmerized by some ideological mirage”? Are Western commentators underplaying the risk to women’s rights and religious minorities arising from the region’s Islamist resurgence?
“If tourists can wear bikinis but local women must wear chadors does that prove the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate?” asks analyst Barry Rubin.
Such sentiments reflect the prevailing sentiment [READ MORE]
Is Burma’s reform process under threat from a sheer lack of capacity and resources?
The regime has introduced economic reforms, relaxed media censorship, allowed independent labor unions, and released hundreds of political prisoners under its liberalization program.
But most of the 651 prisoners released of 10 days ago were petty criminals, not political detainees, say human rights groups. Only 274 were political [READ MORE]
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