Testing Latin America’s democratic resilience
Latin America is about to embark on an extended series of critical electoral contests that will tell us a lot about the state of democracy in the region, notes Ted… Read more »
Author Archives: DemDigest
DRC needs citizen-led transition, civil society tells Nikki Haley
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told the Democratic Republic of Congo to hold elections next year, rather than delay them until 2019, if it wanted to… Read more »
How Kenya’s election ‘wound the democratic clock backwards’
Kenya held a rerun of its presidential election on Thursday, and Uhuru Kenyatta, the incumbent, will undoubtedly get the most votes, notes Kenyan human rights lawyer Maina Kiai. Under the… Read more »
Countdown to Annihilation: Myanmar’s Rohingya genocide
It was already evident in October 2015 that the Rohingya were experiencing genocide in Myanmar, according to Alicia de la Cour Venning, Thomas MacManus and Penny Green, researchers at the International State Crime… Read more »
China’s secret ‘magic weapon’ for global soft power
Xi Jinping is quietly ramping up the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party in a push for global “soft power”, The FT’s James Kynge writes in a… Read more »
Losing faith in the democratic ideal?
What accounts for the troubled condition of liberal democracy today? Marc F. Plattner asks in the latest issue of The Journal of Democracy: Standard explanations cite factors such as slowing… Read more »
Venezuela opposition wins Sakharov human rights prize
Bonds issued by Venezuela and state oil firm PDVSA dropped sharply on Thursday amid concerns cash-flow problems and regulatory hurdles may leave PDVSA unable to make more than $2 billion… Read more »
North Korea’s ‘Parallel Gulag’ exposed
The brutality of North Korea’s government is exposed in a ground-breaking new report on the regime’s political prisons and prison camps. The Parallel Gulag: North Korea’s “An-jeon-bu” Prison Camps… Read more »
Chinese exceptionalism? Ideology rules in CCP’s new top team
A number of major western news groups whose coverage has irked Beijing were excluded from Xi Jinping’s unveiling of China’s new ruling council on Wednesday – in some cases for the… Read more »
Kenya poll highlights East Africa’s fragile democracies
Kenyans vote Thursday in a repeat presidential election that has East Africa’s economic power on edge once more, AP reports: The Supreme Court shocked Africa last month by nullifying… Read more »