Head of State Update

New URL

2008-01-06T12:11:00.001-08:00

We've Moved!

Please Visit the New Location:
http://headofstateupdate.wordpress.com/

Year Two

2008-01-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

Due to popular demand, I have decided to continue Head of State Update for another year.

However, I have really grown to hate Blogger, which makes blogging into a bafflingly frustrating ordeal, due to its horrible interface.

Therefore, Head of State Update 2008 will be hosted on WordPress, a much better blogging server. This site will remain here as my 2007 archive.

So head on over to the new site, and check out my first post detailing what I believe to be the Top 10 Head of State stories of 2007.

December pt. 2

2008-01-01T12:39:00.000-08:00

It has now been officially one year since I started Head of State Update. It's been a lot of fun, and a lot of work. It's no secret that my dedication in keeping the thing consistently updated has notably declined, largely because of of the other professional obligations in my life.

Are you interested in seeing Head of State Update continue for another year? Post your comments.

Anyway, let us finish DECEMBER

Solomons Stabalize Sans Sogavare

The parliament of the Solomon Islands voted no-confidence in their Prime Minister on December 13, booting him from office. Mr. Manasseh Sogavare had been in office for little over a year, taking office in May of 2006.

The Solomons is a very unstable and dangerous country, fraught by considerable turmoil. There are 27 islands in all, and their various tribal populations have taken to killing each other with renewed intensity over the last decade or so. There was a coup in 2000, and the Australians dispatched peacekeepers shortly after, helping stabilize the country.

The first post-coup elections were held in 2006, which resulted in a crazy mess of parties getting elected. The parliament only has 50 seats, but there are nine different parties represented more or less equally, which has made the country virtually ungovernable. They couldn't even decide who to elect as governor general, let alone prime minister.

They've now gone through four prime ministers in three years. The new guy's name is Derek Sikua. He used to be a member of the Sogavare administration, but jumped ship as that regime began to go downhill. The hope is that Prime Minister Sikua, a western-educated professor, will finally bring a clean, accountable, and stable government to the Islands, though I suppose it's just as likely that some scandal will end up turning the parliament against him, in time, and the Solomons will become the Pacific's new Nauru (see last post).

Not Much New in Kyrgyzstan

Igor Chudinov was elected as Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan on Christmas eve, a week after his political party swept to victory in the parliamentary elections. This is a bit of a non-event, and is unlikely to change much. Prime Minister Igor is an ally of the sitting president, a man who is accused of rigging elections, consolidating power, and basically betraying all the principles of the 2005 pro-democratic revolution that brought him to power.

New Presidents, one left, one right

Bigger news was to be had in South Korea, where former businessman Lee Myung Bak of the "Grand National Party" was elected president on December 19. A pro-business conservative, President Bak hopes to usher in greater economic growth in his nation's already very strong economy, through a series of reforms he (seriously) refers to as "Myung Baknomics."

Slovenia also got a new president that week, with Danilo Türk taking office as head of state of the Republic on December 22.

President Türk is a professor, and a career diplomat who has served time at both the UN and EU. I've noticed some news reports have been referring to him as an "independent," but that's only half-true. In the Slovenian system of government, which has a ton of political parties, the presidential candidates are always nominally independents. They then have to win the endorsement of numerous political parties in order to win the national election. So, in Mr. Türk's case, he was able to win the endorsement of most of the left-wing parties, while his opponent, Lojze Peterle, had the backing of the conservative ones.

There has been some concern that the leftist Mr. Türk will not be able to work well with a parliament controlled by conservative parties. The Prime Minister even speculated about resigning, rather than work with the new president. But cooler heads have prevailed and the country will now try its hand at embracing government by bi-partisanship. How's that been going in the US, by the way?

Death in Pakistan

Lastly, the most dramatic, and sad news of the month (if not year) was the December 27 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Ms. Bhutto was the two-time PM of Pakistan during the brief periods in which the Prime Minister was the highest office in the country (the Pakistani constitution has been amended to shreds, and they've changed from being under presidential rule to prime ministerial rule a couple of times). When she was first elected in 1988, it marked the first time ever that a woman had been placed in charge of a Muslim country.

Of course, Ms. Bhutto had the advantage of being the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the guy who ruled Pakistan for much of the 1970's before being overthrown and sentenced to death by one of Pakistan's many military governments. When he died, Ms. Bhutto became "leader for life" of his political party, and emerged as a critic of the military regime, eventually sweeping to power once the generals stood down and democratic elections were held.

As I cartooned about on my other site, history is sort of repeating itself now, but in the Marxian way, with the first time as tragedy, and the second time as a farce. The new leader-for-life of the Bhutto party is 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto, Ms. Bhutto's son. The young Mr. Bhutto is hardly ready for the role that history has thrust upon him, however, and he's too young to even legally hold elected office in Pakistan anyway. So his succession is largely symbolic, and it remains to be seen as to who the true "new Bhutto of Pakistan" will be.

2007-12-31T00:23:00.000-08:00

I don't do a lot of meta-posting on this blog, but I did happen upon an interesting site the other day I thought would be worth sharing.

Executed Today is a cool daily blog that is, as the name implies, all about executions. But what is quite interesting is his special section on past executions of heads of state, as well as his little chart on which current heads of state may be most at risk of getting executed someday.

Check it out if you are feeling morbid.

December!

2007-12-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well December is almost over, let's see what's happened so far.

DECEMBER- PART ONE

Belgium stumbles along blindly

Belgium has really been a strange case. Way back in June I reported that Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt lost his bid for re-election, with his liberal coalition being turfed in favor of a new conservative coalition headed by Yves Leterme. I, like most ignorant non-European types, expected Mr. Leterme to assume office as the new PM very shortly afterwards. How wrong I was.

Belgium, as I noted in my original post, is an enormously divided country, where people live in two distinct lingusitic communities, one Dutch, one French, that have very little to do with each other. These communities have very different interests, and as a result there are no "national" political parties in Belgium, only regional ones. The French socialists, the Dutch conservatives, etc.

Ordinarily, the like-minded politicians put aside their regional differences and form coalitions based on ideology. People expected Mr. Leterme, who is a Dutch conservative, to form an alliance with the French conservatives. But this hasn't happened, largely because the differences between the Belgium right have become inconsolable. The French right, who are the smaller group, want the Belgian federal government strengthened, to ensure they will continue to hold power over national policy. The Dutchies, however, favor just the opposite, and want the federal government to decentralize power to the regions, weakening national authority.

Mr. Leterme has spent the last six months trying to piece some sort of coalition together, but none of the parties, not even the non-conservatives, are willing to play ball. It's quite sad, really. Outside observers have wondered if all this turmoil spells "the end of Belgium," and will usher in a formal separation of the two language communities into two distinct countries. This idea has long been fairly mainstream in Belgium. It's actually surprisingly common for Belgians themselves to speak cynically about how "fake" or "artificial" their nation is. Everyone is aware that the country was only invented to stop France and Germany from invading each other, so it's sometimes hard to develop a true attachment to a nationality that has so obviously been manufactured.

The King of Belgium, Albert the Second, and the Parliament of Belgium have now both agreed to extend the term of Prime Minister Verhofstadt until March. By then, the hope is that the situation will finally be resolved, and a new government and Prime Minister will be able to take over. But do not hold your breath.

Loyalist installed in Togo

In the aftermath of his party's re-election, on December 3, President Faure Gnassingb of Togo promoted his minister of urban development, Mr. Komlan Mally, to Prime Minister. A largely unknown presidential loyalist, his appointment angered the opposition parties, who were naively expecting a more conciliatory nominee. Sour grapes, says the President, noting that if the opposition people wanted their guy to be president they should have won the majority of seats in the parliament.

Latvian leader resigns amid- what else- allegations!

Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis of Latvia resigned on December 5. In office since 2004, Kalvitis had recently become "embattled," which in media-speak means his friends-to-enemies ratio was getting more and more lopsided.

Kalvitis had become unpopular because he tried to fire the Latvian anti-corruption officer, who in turn said that firing the anti-corruption officer was a very corrupt thing to do. So Kalvitis ended up resigning after much acrimony and outrage, both from the opposition and within his own administration.

On December 20, the President of Lativa appointed former Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis to be Kalvitis' replacement. Godmanis, who last held office way back in 1990-1993, is a bit of a elder statesman in Latvia, having served as a key anti-Communist leader during the Soviet days. When Latvia left the USSR, he was appointed the first post-Soviet Prime Minister, though the country quickly spiraled into economic turmoil and he had to resign two years later. He never left politics, though, and continued to serve as a member of parliament and cabinet minister, including a job under Prime Minister Kalvitis.

Ukraine gets second chance at woman-rule

So there is this controversial Princess Leia-esque woman in the Ukraine named Yuliya Tymoshenko.

In the 90's, she was president of the biggest oil firm in the country, the United Energy Systems of Ukraine. She became one of the country's richest women, but according to her official biography on her website, her company was too successful for its own good. Apparently the greedy and jealous Ukranian government decided to sue her on trumped up charges, in order to get their grubby hands on her profits. Less biased sources say that Ms. Tymoshenko was a crooked businesswoman who was probably committing all sorts of crimes of her own— embezzling money, dodging taxes, giving kickbacks to her pals, that sort of thing.

But anyhow, according to her bio:

"The succession of events left only two choices for Yulia Tymoshenko: to stay in the big business and be engaged in confrontation with the state officials or to become a politician and fight for the independence of business from authority and for the state liberalization"

She chose the latter course, and became a conservative politician in the Ukrainian parliament, opposing the socialist, Russian-backed government of President Leonid Kuchma. When Kuchma resigned in 2004, his party and the Putin regime tried to engineer the election of Viktor Yanukovych with much corruption and shenanigans.

Outrage over this triggered a series of events known as the "Orange Revolution" which eventually culimated in the rejection of Mr. Yanukovych and the election of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who became president in 2005 despite nearly dying in a poisoning plot.

Shortly after taking office, President Yushchenko
appointed Ms. Tymoshenko as his prime minister. But clashes soon followed. Tymoshenko favors very hardline libertarian economic policies, and in power she pursued an aggressive agenda of privatization and cutbacks that divided the Orange coalition that had brought her to power. So the President fired her, and she turned against him, founding her own political party, which she of course named after herself, as she is quite a vain woman.

In this March's election, her party won a plurality of seats in the Ukranian parliament, and on December 18 she was formally elected Prime Minister by the parliament once again. PresidentYushchenko has agreed to work with her, but let's see if the feuds of the past resurface.

Nauru

The tiny island country of Nauru impeached their president on December 19.

I will admit that I knew very little about Nauru prior to this, other than it is a tiny tropical place somewhere in the South Pacific. But apparently they have a very whacko political culture over there.

Nauru was originally a German colony, then was administered by the Australians after the First World War, then it became a fully independent republic in 1968. This guy named HammerDeRoburt, who was the supreme chief of the island or whatever during the colonial days, became the first president.

Early on, President Hammer (fun name) established a convention that if he didn't get his own way, he would resign. And then when the parliament conceded to whatever issue he was pushing, they would agree to re-elect him. So Hammer resigned four times and was re-elected nine times, which doesn't add up mathematically I know, but you have to understand that sometimes he was just calling parliament's bluff.

Hammer died in 1992, and there were a bunch of new presidents after him, who all resigned and were re-elected a bunch of times. Sometimes they were also impeached, then re-elected. They've had around 30 presidential terms in 40 years as a result, though less than a dozen actual presidents.

This madness works because there are only 18 people in the Nauru parliament, which makes it about the same size as the student council at my university. In other countries, resignations and impeachments and things seem dramatic, but Nauru is so small such events are really just little petty games of personal vendettas and politicking.

Ludwig Scotty was elected president of Nauru in May of 2003. Four months later he was impeached, and Mr. Ren Harris was elected president for the fourth time in his political career (previous terms: 1999-2000, 2001-2003, and a different period of 2003). In June of 2004 President Harris was impeached again, and Ludwig Scotty became president for the second time.

Following President Scotty's (they have such fun names in that country) second impeachment on December 19, newcomer Marcus Stephen was elected to replace him. President Stephen has never been president before, so let us all hope that his career will be filled with many happy impeachments and re-elections.

What happened in November

2007-11-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a month since my last update, so I reckon its high time to summarize the events of the past month.

November 5- Donald Tusk is sworn in as Prime Minister of Poland, replacing one half of the Kaczynski brothers. Tusk is the leader of the moderate "Civic Platform" party, and pledged to course a moderate agenda. The first thing he did was put forth the moderate proposal to pull Polish pull troops out of Iraq, but keep them in Afghanistan.

November 7- The amusingly-named Prime Minister Miyeegombo Enkhbold of Mongolia resigned, after internal strife in his political party forced him out. This was not hugely relevant; the Mongolian political system is quite unstable, and Mongolian PMs rarely serve more than a year in office. On November 22 the parliament chose Sanj Bayar to be the new prime minister.

Both Mr. Enkhbold and Mr. Bayer are members of what used to be known as the Mongolian Communist Party. Their gang ruled the country from 1912 to the fall of Communism in the mid-1990's. But the party, survived, moderating itself into the modern "People's Revolutionary Party" which accepts democracy and the existence of a free-market economy. After an absence during the 90's, they were voted back into power in 2000.

November 13- Togo is a crooked little French country in Africa. From 1967 to 2005 it was ruled by the tyrannical Gnassingbe Eyadema, then when he died his untalented son Faure took over. This outraged the west, which said Africa should really stop doing this sort of thing. So the EU cut off aid.

Eager to regain legitimacy, President Faure called presidential elections, which he then won. He then began to talk to the opposition parties about holding a free and fair parliamentary election. In order to ensure these were conducted under unbiased eyes, he then picked an opposition politician named Yawovi Agboyibo to be his prime minister for the duration of the election.

The parliamentary election concluded on October 14, with the President's party winning 50 of the 81 seats. On November 13 Prime Minister Agboyibo resigned, saying his "job was done." It's kind of sad things didn't end in a more dramatic way. The President will now likely install some hack of his own in Agboyibo's place.

November 16- Things have been going cuckoo bananas in Pakistan recently, as I am sure you know. The hope I reported on earlier, that General Musharaff might enter into some sort of power-sharing dealie with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto seems to have been dashed in the wake of... well, the General's imposition of martial law and arrest of Ms. Bhutto.

General Musharaff chose to go medieval at precisely the worst possible opportunity, at a time when there was an enormous amount of pressure for him to finally embrace a transition to fully democratic rule. His imposition of martial law thus alienated his regime from many of his former backers, including the United States, so now Musharaff is scrambling to assure the world that, no really, I'm serious about the democracy stuff.

The General announced that parliamentary elections would be held in January, and in anticipation he appointed Muhammadmian Soomro the chairman of the Pakistani Senate to be his new, caretaker prime minister (or as they call the office in that country, "grand vizier") for the duration of the election period.

I am learning that this "appoint a special PM to supervise elections" is actually quite a common practice in third-world countries, where the public generally believes that incumbent politicians are too crooked to be trusted. Mr. Soomoro is a well-respected and independent guy, so let's hope he brings some much-needed legitimacy to Pakistani democracy.

November 23- Since 1998, the President of Lebanon has been Monsieur Emile LaHoud. He was very pro-Syria, and when he came to office he supported what was then the status quo, namely Syria's military occupation of his country, and the ensuring political subordination.

Then in the spring of 2005 there was the so-called Cedar Revolution in which thousands of anti-Syrian Lebanese protesters took to the streets to demonstrate. In the aftermath, Syria ended up withdrawing all her troops, LaHoud's prime minister resigned, and in the emergency elections that followed, anti-Syrian parties won 72 of the 128 of the seats in the legislature.

Everyone was happy, at first, but there were still outstanding problems to address. President LaHoud remained in office, and many of the anti-Syria parties in the parliament were members of Hizbollah, the fundamentalist terror group. Hizbollah hates Israel, and in the Summer of 2006 there was this odd and complicated war between Israel and the part of Lebanon that supports Hizbollah.

Anyhow... President LaHoud's term was set to end on November 23, and in the Lebanese political system it is the job of the parliament to chose a replacement. But since the parliament is polarized between fundies and moderates, they were unable to make a decision. The Hizbollah members often boycotted the election sessions, which prevented the parliament from obtaining quorum, and thus making a decision.

So on the morning of November 23 LaHoud left office, with no one to replace him. LaHoud declared that he was giving his powers to the armed forces, but Prime Minister Fuad Saniora contests this, and considers himself to be the "acitng president" in the absence of a proper one. This situation is obviously going to explode into a huge political crisis, so let's all watch eagerly.

November 28- Almazbek Atambayev, who we remember was appointed prime minister of the vowel-less republic of Kyrgyzstan last March, resigned today. The Associated Press says this was done in anticipation of the country's December elections.

Kyrgyzstan is ruled by a strong president who has become fairly unpopular recently. So he appointed Atambayev to be his PM. Atambayev is the leader of the opposition party, so this was supposed to show that the President is a great guy who unites everyone. But now the election is around the corner, so both men need to stop pretending to like each other.

John Howard, the lovable four-term Prime Minister of Australia was booted from office last week. He'd been in power since 1996. That was probably too long, because the Australians had grown tired of him.

Howard was a strong conservative, and was something of a godfather figure to conservative politicians in other countries, especially Canada and the United States. He loudly and unapologetically opposed things that were quite unfashionable to oppose, such as same-sex marriage, immigration, and the Kyoto Accord, while simultaneously embracing things that were supposed to be unpopular, such as the Iraq War, George W. Bush, and the British Monarchy. And he was enormously successful, defying a great deal of conventional wisdom in the process.

But the new conventional wisdom was that Howard was a fool to run for a fifth term in office, and this time, the pundits were right.

The fellow who beat Howard is Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd. Unlike Howard, Rudd was never a professional politician, and has in fact came quite late to electoral politics. For most of his adult life he was a bureaucrat of some sort, working behind the scenes in the foreign office, the state of Queensland, and then the national Labor Party.

Rudd will be the first left-wing PM in over a decade. Australia is a pretty conservative country overall. Since the war they've had about 40 years of rule by the conservative party (which is oddly actually called the "Liberal Party") compared to only 20 from the Labourites.

Weird Countries

2007-10-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of political and history books, but not a lot of fiction. But it doesn't matter, because reality is frequently much stranger than fiction anyway. When you study the politics of other countries you frequently come across stories that are so thoroughly bizarre they couldn't even pass as plots of a second-rate drug story paperback.

For example, imagine someone wrote a book in which a country was ruled by two identical twins, one of whom was president, while the other was prime minister. And they were both former movie stars. It sounds absurd, but that's the government of Poland I am describing, where two twin brothers, Lech Kaczynski and Jaroslaw Kaczynski controll both executive offices of the republic.

But not for much longer. Poland had parliamentary elections last week and the brothers' right-wing party was dealt a harsh blow. The moderate Civic Platform won 209 of 460 seats meaning they will now get to choose a new prime minister and undermine the powers of the president. It was an amusing era while it lasted.

Meanwhile, we have Argentina, where the president's wife was elected president yesterday. This hardly even seems like news. The entire Argentine political system is based around wives becoming president.

In the 1940's the country was ruled by Colonel Juan Peron, an extreme populist who had no coherent ideology other than giving "the people" (as defined by him) what they wanted. And the people liked him, largely because of his beautiful, shrewish wife Evita, who bossed him around behind the scenes. They made a musical about it, as I am sure you know.

Evita wanted to be president herself, so Juan tried to promote her to vice president so he could resign sometime down the line and let her take over. But she died of Cancer and the military overthrew him, so that plan never came to be.

Exiled in Spain for almost 20 years, Juan Peron met a nightclub dancer named Isabel and they married. Then the political tides began to turn in Argentina, and the political elites begged Juan to come back and be president again. By then it was 1973 and Peron was quite old, but he agreed anyway.

Desperate to reclaim his past success, Juan tried to present Isabel as the second-coming of Evita. But where Evita had been shrewd and intellectual, Isabel was ditzy and disinterested. She had absolutely no political experience and her interest in Argentina was little more than a natural outcome of being in the right place at the right time.

But Peron made her vice president regardless, and people went along with it. But then Peron died a year later, and Isabel became president, and the political and military elites began to second-guess turning a blind eye.

Isabel was overthrown after less than a year in office. It was a sad end to Latin America's first female president, and her downfall led to the rise of a very vicious right-wing military dictatorship that killed a lot of people and invaded the Falkland Islands, among other things.

In 1983 democracy returned to Argentina. The new presidents embraced radical free-market reforms in an effort to turn around the country's crumbling economy, which had been badly mismanaged by years of corruption and incompetence from the ruling juntas.

But for a number of reasons (look it up, I'm no economist) the reforms never really did what they were supposed to do. Unemployment, inflation, and corruption continued to thrive, reaching a peak in 2001 when angry Argentines took to the streets in protest over their worsening wages and increasingly worthless currency.

What happened next was sort of comically tragic. Sensing the president was likely to resign soon, the vice president resigned. Then, the president did. In accordance with the law of succession, the president of the senate then became acting president, but he resigned two days later. The Congress then appointed one of the state governors to be acting president, but that guy resigned as well after a week in office. The president of the senate then resigned again, in order to prevent becoming acting president again, and the presidency passed to the president of the House of Representatives. He resigned two days later, and the Congress appointed another governor to serve as acting prez. His name was Eduardo Duhalde, and he had the sanity to call for emergency elections.

In 2003 Duhalde lost, and Governor Nestor Kirchner was elected as Argentina's first non-acting president in several years. Kirchner was a fiery Peronist who wanted to return the country to the populist "third way" of the late president, and away from the free-market worship of his successors. During the last four years he's pursued an eclectic bunch of policies which have generally made him quite popular. He's been a strong proponent of persecuting former members of the military regime, and foreign policy wise he's taken a pretty consistently anti-American stance, that while not quite in Hugo Chavez land, has earned him a lot of the same praise from the left.

Kirchner surprised many when he announced he would not run for a second term. The nomination of the Peronist party he leads was instead given to his wife (and sitting senator) Cristina. Unlike Evita and Isabel, Cristina has been a successful politician in her own right. She's been in the game even longer than Nestor himself, in fact. The two are thus the ultimate power couple, with careers that feed off each other. Some pundits have even speculated that the two may be planning a "take turns" approach to the presidency, since Nestor could conceivably run for a non-consecutive second term in 2011 and then she again in 2015.

Would this sound believable if you read it in a romance novel?

Death in Burma

2007-10-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

So the Prime Minister of Burma died. But don't get excited, it's just a co-incidence. It doesn't actually affect the depressing situation in Burma in any major way.

So Burma was a British colony, right? Then in the 1960's, shortly after becoming independent the new government was overthrown by this Marxist lunatic named General Ne Win. He was the sort of Robert Mugabe of his time, destroying one of the richest economies of the region with poorly conceived Communist-style reforms. He was also famously eccentric and believed in magic spells and UFOs and that lot. But I'm sure you've never heard of him because he wasn't "US-backed" and for some reason those dictators have sort of fallen through the cracks of the popular imagination, as I noted when Mengistu Haile Mariam was found guilty of genocide earlier this year.

But yeah, General Ne stepped down in 1981 and his military junta reshuffled itself, bringing to power the generation of generals who are in charge today. General Than Shwe became the head of state, or as they call the office in Burma, "Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council." His new government undid a lot of Ne's Marxist reforms, and renamed the country from "the Socialist Republic of Burma" to "the Union of Myanmar," but kept oppression levels just as high.

In 1990, under heavy international pressure, his junta held its first-ever democratic election, to chose a new parliament and prime minister. Aung San Suu Kyi, the elegant daughter of Burma's somewhat overrated independence hero, was elected along with her National League for Democracy party. But of course the junta was having none of this; they had only done the stupid election in the first place because they naturally assumed that their party, which I assume was called the National League for Killing You Bastards While We Take Your Money, would win a landslide. So the election was invalidated and Ms. San Suu Kyi became the big international superstar she is today.

The guy who died was named Soe Win, a longtime member of the junta who was promoted to the office of Prime Minister in 2004, after the old PM was fired and jailed for being too moderate. The key sticking point was the matter of negotiation with Ms. San Suu Kyi. The moderate faction of the junta favors talks while the hardline faction, which includes General Shwe, does not.

Prime Minister Win suffered from some mysterious disease that was probably leukemia, and was hospitalized a few months ago. So he basically missed his chance to be part of the big crackdown-on-protesting-monks fiesta that has dominated international headlines.
His death in a Singapore hospital this week was not unexpected. It's interesting though, because his absence probably has made it a bit easier for the junta to compromise. General Shwe now says he will in fact meet with Ms. San Suu Kyi. He probably hopes to just shut her up for a few years, but that's still something.

2007-10-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Some interesting developments, let's plunge in.

Musharrafocracy

General Pervez Musharraf's grip over Pakistan has been slowly weakening over the last couple of months. People have been protesting his authoritarian rule more actively, and the demand for democratic reforms have been strong.

Musharraf came to power in a coup in 1999. In doing so, he deposed a guy named Nawaz Sharif, who had been elected Prime Minister in 1997. Sharif in turn came to power after Ms. Benazir Bhutto, the old PM, was removed from office due to gross corruption. They were both exiled after the coup, and as General Musharraf became more unpopular, both began to plot a political comeback.

Mr. Sharif's plan seems to have been the more poorly thought out. Last month he flew back into the country, smug and secure that he'd be greeted as a returning hero. Instead, minutes after he stepped into the airport, guards arrested him and sent him on the first plane back out.

Ms. Bhutto, in contrast, has been engaged in high-level behind-the-scenes negotiations with General Musharraf. And if recent reports are to be believed, they have paid off.

The parliament of Pakistan today voted to extend Musharraf's term as president for another four years. Ms. Bhutto's faction in the parliament boycotted, but did not oppose the vote, and regarded the extension of the General's term as legitimate. Musharraf has in turn agreed to resign from the army, stop wearing a military uniform, and drop all outstanding corruption charges against Bhutto.

Bhutto will return to Pakistan soon, and will run for another term as Prime Minister in upcoming elections. Musharraf has agreed to share power with her, if she wins.

So everything seems to be all rosy and lovely for the time being. Perhaps a glorious shining democratic future is in the works.
Here's a fun fact about Pakistan, though. No leader in the entire history of that country has ever served a full term in office. Not one! They've all either been overthrown, killed, or impeached.

Putinocracy

I'll tell you one country that's not going to have a glorious democratic future, though- Russia!

Mr. Putin's term has expired, so he has to step down as president at the end of this year. Analysts were a bit flabbergasted that Putin was willing to go along with this. "Putin the tyrant respect term limits?" they said, "what madness is this!" I thought they were just being alarmist at first. Maybe Putin wasn't as autocratic as they say.

Then Putin appointed his friend, who no one had ever heard of, as Prime Minister a couple weeks ago. Okay, well that seemed a bit dodgy. It was obvious the new PM was being groomed to succeed Putin in the presidential election, just as Yeltsin had groomed Putin back when the latter was Prime Minister. But still, at least Putin was acknowledging that he wasn't going to be in power any more.

The conspiracy theorists finally got what they wanted this week, though. Putin was named leader of the "United Russia" political party, which dominates the Russian parliament. Putin then announced that he'd like to become Prime Minister again should a "decent, capable and modern person with whom I can work" be elected president and decide to appoint him. Hopefully you can fill in the rest of the blanks.

Boring formal updates

But it wasn't all cloak-and-dagger intrigue around the world. In the last few weeks there have been a couple mundane transfers of power.

The Republic of Mali, one of Africa's more stable and democratic countries had a parliamentary election in July in which the ruling party was turfed a new coalition was elected. The incumbent Prime Minister Ousmane Issoufi Maïga agreed to step down once the coalition got its stuff together. He officially resigned on September 27, and the next day the President appointed Mr. Modibo Sidibé as new PM. Sidbe is a longtime loyalist to Mali's popular head of state, President Amadou Toumani Toure. As is the case in most African nations, the Prime Minister of Mali is not a very strong or relevant office, and exists mostly to serve the president. Regardless, President Toure is now in a much stronger position having a loyalist in the PM's office and a sympathetic majority in the parliament.

The half-year terms of the two Captains of San Marino came to an end on October 1. The new captains are named Mirko Tomassoni and Alberto Selva. They shall hold office until April. I wrote about San Marino's kooky political system (and country) a few months ago. http://headofstateupdate.blogspot.com/2007/04/welcome-to-serene-republic-of-san.html

At first I thought the President of Serbia died last week, but it turns out only the President of the Serb Republic died. Serbia is a country, while the Serb Republic is just a province in the Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina. This is a subtle distinction which only political nerds like me would appreciate. Well, and the Serbian people, I guess.

Short, bespectacled gentleman placed in charge of Asian nation

2007-09-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

The Japanese got a new Prime Minister yesterday. Yasuo Fukuda was appointed leader of the ruling Liberal Party on Sunday, and was then officually confirmed to office by a vote of the parliament on Monday.

Fukuda was the longtime chief secretary of the cabinet under the fomrer Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, which is a very important job in the Japanese system. So his promotion was widely anticipated.

Other than that, uh... the news reports say he's a "moderate," and he was the son of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, who ruled for a couple years in the 1970's.

Sierra Leone

2007-09-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

Not much in the news lately. It's been a slow couple of weeks. So I'll just ramble on a bit about Sierra Leone, a country I've been studying a bit recently.

They got a new president last Monday. Longtime opposition party leader Ernest Bai Koroma was sworn in a few weeks after he achieved a solid victory over the ruling party candidate.

Sierra Leone is a former British colony in Africa with a predictably turbulent and tragic political history.

The country achieved independence in 1961. Its first prime ministers were two brothers, Sir Milton Margai and Sir Albert Margai. Then in 1967, Sir Albert, the younger one, lost his bid for re-election to Siaka Stevens and his "All Peoples' Congress" Party. It was the first time in history that an African government had lost a bid for re-election. People hoped it would also be the first peaceful transition of power.

Sir Albert didn't want to give up power, though, so he asked the army to stage a coup to keep himself in office. But the army had plans of their own. They did the coup, but exiled Sir Albert.

A counter-coup later deposed the army, who has governed for about a year. The democratically-elected Mr. Stevens was installed to the office he had rightly earned.

But then Stevens turned into a tyrant. He removed Queen Elizabeth as head of state and made himself executive president, ending Sierra Leone's record as the longest-running black African country to remain under the British monarchy. He also banned all political parties and suppressed most civil liberties. Not a particularly violent regime, though, which by Sierra Leone's low standards means Mr. Stevens is now remembered as a gentle statesman.

Stevens resigned in 1986 and his vice president replaced him. In 1992, just as the country was starting to liberalize, the new guy was overthrown by the military, and once again a junta government came to power.

The new military regime lasted much longer than the first one, from 1992 to 1996. The presidency was abolished and all power was concentrated in the hands of a "Council of State" headed by Captain Valentine Strasser.

As the years went on, the nation spiraled into death, turmoil, and civil war. The military regime was incredibly harsh, and backed roaming militias who kept the citizenry in line with random kidnappings, torture, and public executions. Charles Taylor, the kleptocratic dictator of next-door Liberia, made things worse by funding a terrorist group known as the Revolutionary United Front in an attempt to destabilize the regime for his own power interests. The RUF was well-known for recruiting child soldiers, which earned the scorn of much of the world.

In 1996 Captain Strasser was overthrown by a more moderate captain named Julius Bio, who announced a return to democracy. Free elections were held, and the newly-elected civilian president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah quickly moved to sign a peace treaty with the RUF, and end the fighting.

But then, sigh, President Kabbah was overthrown a few months later by rebel officer Major Johnny-Paul Koroma, who was a supporter of the RUF. He tried to bring back military rule, but by now much of the world had tuned into Sierra Leone's plight. The UN security council and most African states in the region slapped harsh sanctions on his regime and refused to recognize it. Defeated, Johnny-Paul soon agreed to step down and restore President Kabbah.

Tony Blair then deployed 1,500 British troops to Sierra Leone to defend Kabbah and the capital city from further rebel insurrections. The Brits in turn trained the police and a restructured army, purged of trouble-makers. For this, Mr. Blair is much beloved in the country.

The restored Mr. Kabbah remained in power until this month, when elections were held to pick his successor. Though far more legitimate than the military kooks before him, Kabbah was generally regarded as corrupt and incompetent—not the strong leader many had hoped for. So now we have Mr. Koroma in power, and he promises to do things differently.

We'll see... we'll see.

Prime Ministers Wrap-up

2007-09-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

Heir Made Apparent

President Putin of Russia fired his Prime Minister today. Mikhail Fradkov had been in power since 2004, but will now be replaced by Victor Zubkov (seen on the right), the obscure director of some sort of anti-corruption department. The move has been analyzed as Putin's last-minute attempt to groom an hier. Presidential elections are scheduled for this coming March, but Putin has so far declined to endorse any of the declared candidates.

The Prime Minister's office is a natural stepping stone to the presidency. If Mr. Putin resigns before his term ends, Prime Minister Zubkov will automatically become president. Being the incumbent president as well as Mr. Putin's choice will make him virtually unbeatable in a popular election. Putin, a former prime minster, was himself catapulted to power through the exact same process, back when Boris Yeltsin resigned prematurely in 1999.

No one really knows who Mr. Zubkov is, which will likely have all the world's intelligence departments scrambling to do research in the next couple of days. The main thing we know is that he's a loyal friend of Putin's from way back, which brings with it obvious conclusions.

The Russian Prime Ministership is not a strong post, and the men who hold the office are appointed by the president to help guide his legislative agenda through the parliament. Rather akin to the Prime Minister of France. Putin was much better at managing his PMs than Boris Yeltsin. In his 1999 to 2007 term, Mr. Zubkov will be only Putin's fourth. Mr. Yeltsin went through nine, including a botched attempt to appoint himself PM.

Japan Resumes Proud Tradition of Instability

Junichiro Koizumi was Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. He was popular and charismatic, and was re-elected a couple of times, staying in power for a total of five-and-a-half years. The longest-serving Prime Minister since Eisaku Sato, who ruled for seven years from 1964 to 1972.

The cutthroat nature of Japanese party politics, coupled with the culturally-ingrained Japanese impulse to resign whenever anything goes wrong, has ensured that Japanese PMs tend to have very brief shelf lives, as I have chronicled on this chart here: http://www.filibustercartoons.com/japan.htm

As you can see, there have been 25 in all since 1948, with 10 of those serving a year or less.

When Koizumi resigned last year, the all-powerful and always-in-power Japanese Liberal Party appointed cabinet minister Shinzo Abe to replace him.

Japanese prime ministers are not extremely powerful figures- a deliberate result of Japan's anti-authoritarian post-war constitution. More than anything else, they act as a voice and a face for the government-of-the-day. That's why Koizumi-san was so popular, he was a great communicator and a lovable man.

True power in Japan lies with the party bosses. Even though the Liberals have been in power more or less continually for the last five decades, their vast party is a mess of competing factions and interests, and any PM has to walk a delicate line to appease them all. They all make their conflicting demands, and the prime minister can either formulate some compromise, or get non-confidence voted out of power and give someone else a shot.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago there were elections for the Japanese Senate, and the Japanese Liberal Party lost its majority there in a stunning upset. This was of course shameful for Abe-san, so people called on him to resign.

And yesterday he announced that he would. Almost exactly one year in power. The Liberals will now have to scramble and find someone else for the job, though when precisely the transition will take place is not currently known.

Other Prime Minister Dies

A while ago I mentioned that John Compton, the Prime Minister of Saint Luca, had a stroke, and was incapacitated. Well he sadly passed away earlier this week. The Governor-General promoted Stephenson King, who had been running the small Caribbean county as acting prime minister since May, to full prime minister.

Who's running Bangladesh Part II

2007-09-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Things have really gone to pot in Bangladesh since I last covered the affairs in that country back in January.

To summarize quickly, Bangladesh has a quirk in their constitution where the prime minister is supposed to resign immediately before elections to make way for an interim PM, who is in turn supposed to preside over the government during the election cycle and thus prevent corruption.

After much in-fighting, Fakhruddin Ahmed was eventually appointed interim PM. He was a distinguished technocrat who was supposed to provide calm, neutral governance so elections could be held. But unfortunately he's turned into a bit of a tyrant over the last few months.

Although to be fair the country he inherited was hardly stable. Following the political breakdown that resulted in his appointment, Bangladesh was crippled with partisan strikes and political riots. Everyone was accusing each other of corruption, and the looming election looked like it was destined to be a violent nightmare.

Ahmed declared a state of emergency shortly after taking power, and the army pledged loyalty to him. Partisan activities were banned, and the leaders of both major political parties were arrested, as were numerous student activists and other political agitators. And of course the elections were cancelled, which in turn meant parliament was suspended indefinitely.

The president of Bangladesh, Iajuddin Ahmed (no relation), has been rather sidelined during all of this. But now he's in the news because his term was scheduled to end on Wednesday. In the Bangladeshi system the president is elected by parliament, but since there's no parliament, there can be no election. So President Ahmed said "fine, I'll just hang around then."

The interim Prime Minister says he still plans to hold elections before 2008, but the clock is rapidly ticking. And with everyone and everything of political relevance either banned or in jail, it's hard to see how the country is in any sort of shape for a democratic exercise.

The interim Prime Minister and his army backers.

Jamaica, land we love

2007-09-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of months I've often made particular notice of women leaders coming to power. But of course coming to power is only one side of the equation. Being kicked out of power is all part of the equality game, too!

Just ask Mrs. Portia Simpson-Miller, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, who was booted from office in an election yesterday.

Jamaica, many people are surprised to learn, used to have white Prime Ministers until very recently. See, check out this gallery (click to enlarge):

Mr. Patterson was the first black PM, and ruled the longest as well, from 1992 to 2006. When he resigned, his political party, the People's National Party, appointed Ms. Simpson-Miller, a longtime cabinet minister, to replace him as leader of the PNP, and thus automatically PM as well.

The new female PM was initially popular, but her party has been power for such a long time that people are starting to get sick of it. The election results now say that the PNP and Ms. Simpson-Miller have very narrowly gone down to defeat. The PNP only won 28 seats in the 60-seat parliament, while the opposition party, Labour, won 32.

The leader of the Labour Party will now become Prime Minister, in conjunction with the British parliamentary protocol Jamaica follows. His name is Bruce Golding and he's been in the political scene for a while now. Jamaica, much like the United States, has a rather rigid two-party system. Mr. Golding is perhaps best known for trying to found a third party to break the deadlock. But that failed, of course, so in 2005 he decided to just take over the Labour Party and became its new leader (the first black to lead that party too, I should note).

He remains a reformist at heart, though, and during the election he promised to make all sorts of dramatic revisions to the Jamaican parliamentary system in order to make it more accountable and democratic. As a fan of parliamentary reform, I am keen to see how well he is able to make out.

The New Face of Turkey

2007-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Abdullah Gül was elected President of Turkey this week, thus finally concluding the most drawn-out and controversial presidential election in modern Turkish history.

I wrote about the controversial Mr. Gül earlier this year during his first attempt to run for president. A former Islamist, many within Turkey's secular elite found him too religious to be ruler of a republic that prides itself on strongly separating church from state.

Just to recap, in April the parliament elected Mr. Gül president, but that vote was later deemed invalid due to lack of quorum. So things were delayed for a couple of months, and Mr. Gül said he wouldn't run again, to spare the nation any more turmoil.

But then in July the Turks had a parliamentary election, and the religious Justice and Development Party won a divisive majority. This emboldened them, as it meant they no longer had to worry about appeasing the other, smaller parties and their whiny calls to respect secularism. So they decided to renominate Mr. Gül and on August 28 they pushed through his election, which he won in a landslide vote of 339 to 83.

The Turkish president is sworn in on the same day of his election, so Mr. Gül formally became Turkey's 11th president later that evening.

In old Turkey the military probably would be staging a coup right about now, because Mr. Gül, despite being a born-again secularist and enemy of Islamism, is still considered to be too much of a socially conservative busy-body to be trusted with power. But new Turkey is trying to get into the EU, and in the battle between democracy and secularism democracy is a value much less easily compromised. Considering the parliament's- and by extension the voters- overwhelming endorsement of Gül, a coup at this point would do far more damage to Turkey's international image and prestige than any religious agenda the new president will be able to cook up.

The military knows this, but old habits die hard, and following Mr. Gül's election they still made some official noises of displeasure. The Chief of the Army staff declared that "centers of evil" were working to erode secularism, and all of the country's top generals boycotted their new Commander-in-Chief's inauguration ceremony.

Sunrise, Sunset

2007-08-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Virgin Matures

Part of the reason why the British Empire was so successful was thanks to the naturally efficient tendencies of the British people. They organized their empire better than most people organize their socks, with elaborate categories and columns and hierarchies and bureaucracies.

There is no British Empire today of course, but the British still have a collection of things called "overseas territories" which they sort of colonially-run. The surviving relics of the Empire, as it were. There's about a dozen of them today, and they're all little islands with tiny populations. Government-wise, they have different systems depending on what stage of colonial "evolution" they're at.

The smaller colonies have strong governors, appointed by the British government, who hold almost all political power. As the colony matures and grows, it eventually gets an elected parliament, and the governor delegates some of his powers to the legislature. As it matures further, the parliament gets larger and more sophisticated, and chooses its own chief minister and cabinet to assist the governor in day-to-day operations. And then, in the final step before independence, the chief minister becomes a prime minister, and the governor becomes a mostly symbolic figure, who is barely involved in government at all.

I mention all this because one of Britain's more famous colonies recently upgraded its status. On August 20 the British Virgin Islands formally entered the final phase of colonial evolution, and new elections were held. Longtime politician Ralph O'Neal was in turn elected the nation's first Prime Minister.

The Virgin Islands joins Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands as territories of Britain that are virtually independent. Certainly more independent than Canada was in the early 20th Century, if you want to use that analogy. It remains to be seen whether or not any of these nations will ever become fully independent countries, however. The Bermuda people routinely vote against independence, in part because they benefit from the various tax breaks and passport loopholes that come with being colonial citizens. The Puerto Ricans have been pulling the same scam for decades.

Rest in Peace

And now, a rather sad collection of deaths to report.

Gaston Thorn died yesterday, he was the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg and one of that country's great statesmen. He was PM for five years, from '74 to '79. After leaving office he became head of the European Commission, and was one of the founding fathers of the modern EU system.

Raymond Barre passed away on the 25th, he was the Prime Minister of France from 1976 to 1981, serving between Jacque Chirac's two terms. A conservative economist, he was one of the first western leaders to advocate the kind of harsh right-wing economic reforms that would become so fashionable in the 1980's.

Perhaps most notable of all was the August 24 death of Abdul Rahman Arif. Arif was President of Iraq from 1966 to 1968. His term ended when he was overthrown by the Baath Party, who proceded to establish a dictatorship under President Ahmad Hassan al Baker and Vice President Saddam Hussein.

Arif was the brother of the first President of Iraq, Abdul Salam Arif, who was part of the gang that overthrew the Iraqi monarchy in the late 1950's. When the elder Arif was killed in a helicopter crash, the younger assumed the presidency of the nation. And the Iraqi people cheered, because this kind of thing clearly illustrated how a dictatorship was superior to a monarchy.

Dubious Man Elected Through Dubious Process

2007-08-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Some readers have noted I failed to make any comments regarding the new President of Latvia, who took office while I was away, on July 8. Well it's over a month now, but in the interests of completeness I will say a few words about him.

Dr. Valdis Zatlers is his name. He achieved a narrow first-round victory in a parliamentary vote held on May 31, beating former supreme court justice Aivars Endzins.

The election was one of the most contentious in Latvia's democratic history, reflecting the fact that the once-symbolic presidency has become a more powerful and important office in recent years. Both candidates were controversial for different reasons. Endzins was a former Communist who was on record defending the Soviet occupation of his country, which needless to say rubbed some people the wrong way. But at least he had political experience, which was more than could be said of Dr. Zatlers, who although an accomplished physician, never held any sort of elected or appointed office of government.

Zalter's election was also controversial because many Latvians have grown to dislike the rather old-fashioned and unaccountable way in which their presidents are elected. Dr. Zatlers was, by all accounts, the less popular candidate with the general public, but that fact didn't matter since the general public doesn't get to elect their president directly. Zatler was parliament's choice, but that's not necessarily a good thing, as many Latvians hold their parliament in rather low regard.

But now he's in office. It remains to be seen whether he will be a dynamic and strong president like his predecessor, the popular Vaira Vike-Freiberga, or merely a puppet of the country's oligarchical elites, as many of his opponents fear.

Here's a fine Latvian-written editorial on the new fellow and the controversies surrounding him:

Three Stories of July

2007-08-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

So, I've been gone for a while eh? Let's recap what has transpired in the last month.

STORY NUMBER ONE

India has a new president! And a woman at that.

India is one of many countries where the president is a useless figurehead. But the election process is probably one of the most complicated political procedures in the world, a fact due to the sheer size of India. The winning candidate must secure a majority of votes by the Indian parliament and all 28 of India's state legislatures. That's over 4,000 politicians to win over. Luckily the country has a very rigid party hierarchy, so legislators generally vote the way their leaders tell them.

Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the majority Indian Congress Party and the most powerful politician in the country, decided that her country needed a woman president. Perhaps she was just bitter because she didn't get to be Prime Minister back in 2004, even though she won the friggin election. So anyway, as leader of the country's most dominant political party, Ms. Gandhi nominated her pal Pratibha Patil to be the new president of India. Ms. Patil was the Governor of Rajasthan, India's largest state, and a loyal party hack. On July 21 she won the vote handily, with 2,931 votes, or around 65%.

Governor Patil was sworn in four days later, on the 25th. Even though the Indian presidency is not powerful, the Indian people take the symbolism of the office seriously, so it was something of a big deal to finally have a woman president. In the past they have had Muslim and Sikh presidents, as well as a president from the much-hated "untouchables" caste.

Here's a picture of the new president performing one of her typical roles:

STORY NUMBER TWO

Another historic first occurred for women in the Commonwealth of Antigua and Barbuda. In early July the Prime Minister appointed Louise Lake-Tack as the country's first female Governor-General.

Ms. Lake-Tack was a longtime lawyer and low-level judge who worked in both A&B and England. But she was never a particularly famous or important figure in either country. She was however, a loyal supporter and fundraiser of the political party of the current Antiguan Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer. So Spencer appointed her Governor-General, much to the outrage of the opposition parties, who accused Spenny of using the nation's highest post as a shallow patronage appointment. All the opposition politicians refused to attend the inauguration ceremony in protest.

Counting Ms. Lake-Tack, Antigua and Barbuda has had three governor-generals in all, since the country became independent from the UK in 1981. The last colonial governor, Sir Wilfred E. Jacobs, served in the new position for 12 years. Then from 1993 to 2007 the post was held by Sir James Carlisle, a famous dentist. In small countries it is sometimes hard to scrounge up famous people.

STORY NUMBER THREE

Bhutan is a fundamentalist Bhuddist monarchy located between India and China. They tend to be a very self-aggrandizing lot, and often make the Dinseyesque claim of being "the happiest country on Earth." But the happiest place on Earth has a rather authoritarian system of government, under all-powerful king and no voting.

But things are slowly starting to change. Last year the longtime king resigned, and his 27-year-old son took the throne, supposedly to usher in a new era of more enlightened leadership. The new king proceeded to call for the country's first elections, which are scheduled to occur in March of '09.

In preparation for this historic event, Khandu Wangchuk, the royal Prime Minister resigned on July 31. He was replaced by Kinzang Dorji, who will serve as acting PM until a new one can be elected in March. Mr. Wangchuck hopes to run in the race, but thinks it would be a conflict if he stays in office during the election. So we shall see how things go.

***

So yeah. Those were the three most relevant things that happened while I was gone, head of state wise. Stay tuned for the resumption of regular updates!

2007-07-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

Just so you know, I have gone to Europe for the next month or so, to live amongst the Europeans and try to understand their far-out and frankly wrong way of life. With all the traffic signs and noodles with cheese and the rest. So see you when I return!

Un-elected Leaders Assume Office

2007-07-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

Israel's Presidential Saga Ends

The President of Israel resigned yesterday, which is a bit surprising considering that he only had 14 days left in his term of office. President Katsav has been battling lawyers for the last couple of months over sexual harassment suits with several women. It brought great disgrace to the presidency, but Katsav was afraid to resign, lest he open himself up to formal persecution. After the parliament failed to impeach him, he "temporarily" delegated his presidential powers to the speaker of the parliament, Ms. Dalia Itzik, in late January of 07. Since then, President Katsav has not been seen or heard of much, and was expected to quietly ride his term into the sunset.

But no, he has now evidently resigned as part of a plea bargain with his accusers. According to the Associated Press:

Under [the plea bargain] Mr. Katsav agreed to step down and plead guilty to charges of sexual harassment, indecent acts and harassment of a witness. He will pay damages to the complainants but he will not serve any time in prison.

I still don't entirely understand why the resignation was necessary this late in the game, but oh well. Acting President Itzik is now just plain ol' President Itzik, and is now officially the first female president of Israel, full stop.

Here's a nice picture of Israel's leaders. On the left we see Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then in the centre we see President Itzki kissing Shimon Peres, the man who will replace her as president in two weeks.

New Nanny Appointed

The Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina is a country that was was created by the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 to stop everyone in the former Yugoslavia from killing each other. Their constitution is an extraordinarily elaborate maze of institutions designed to equally appease each ethnic group in the federation. Instead of one president, for example, they have three, so no one group is favored more than the other.

Anyway, B-and-H's sovereignty is not absolute. Since the country was established it has been actively supervised by the United Nations via something called the "Peace Implementation Council," which basically meddles in the country's politics as it sees fit, in order to ensure the terms of the Dayton Accord are honored. The Supreme Head of the Peace Council is the High Representative, who is appointed by the UN Security Council. The High Representative can fire anyone he likes, even the presidents if they are deemed to be acting improperly.

Since 2006 the High Representative of B-and-H has been Herr Christian Schwarz-Schilling, a former German cabinet minister. There was hope he'd be the last one ever, since the international community is getting tired of playing nanny. But no, the Bosnia-and-Hercegovinan politicians have failed to make some of the necessary reforms the Peace Council has been recommending, so more supervision is required until they finally do.

Today Miroslav Lajcak became the new High Representative. He's a former ambassador and bureaucrat from the Republic of Slovakia. Let's see if he'll be the last one.

Here's Mr. Lajack shaking hands with Herr Schwartz-Schilling. The flamboyant one is the German.