Word: authoritarian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Venezuela could firmly establish a trend that, according to those who oppose such restrictions, will strengthen democracy by allowing voters to decide how long a popular leader can stick around. Term-limit proponents, however, say Chávez's triumph will only carry the region back to its authoritarian past. "What Venezuelan voters decide is their business," says John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent think tank. "But a threshold does seem to have been crossed...
...despite his authoritarian image, Chávez is not a dictator nor a 21st century Castro. He's been democratically elected three times, subjected himself to a 2004 recall vote (which he defeated) and permits a noisy opposition press. But John Walsh, senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, an independent think tank, says Chávez's political hegemony already threatens checks and balances on the government. Like other analysts, Walsh points to the hundreds of opposition politicos, like López, barred from running in regional elections last year due to obscure corruption charges leveled...
...recent weeks Bao has repeatedly questioned the authoritarian nature of China's central government. He helped draft Charter 08, a lengthy pro-democracy manifesto that was made public Dec. 10 and was initially signed by 303 mainland writers, scholars and artists - a number that has since grown to several thousand. Then he released a series of essays through Radio Free Asia that questioned the accomplishments of the Party. In those essays, Bao argued that the Communist Party's motivations for reforming the economy in the early 1980s after the devastation of the Cultural Revolution were not entirely pure. "Even though...
...talk of the Internet's threat to authoritarian regimes, China's Communist Party has capably rebuffed the Web's challenge to its rule. But a growing trend on the Chinese Internet could make life unpleasant for a handful of government bureaucrats who offend the cybercitizenry. (See pictures of China's electronic-waste village...
Many South Koreans have the nagging feeling that authoritarian tendencies are in play here since Minerva, who had already achieved notoriety months before the arrest, was in the government's sights as early as September and October after his blogposts predicted the fall of U.S investment bank Lehman Brothers as well as the won's decline. Minerva had become such a sensation during the global financial meltdown that Korea's Minister of Strategy and Finance, Kang Man Soo, weighed in, saying he hoped to furnish the blogger with more economic facts so he would trust the government. (See 10 things...