Word: coupes
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...oversee and scrutinize the government's actions. The previous government wanted to control the whole system. That [led to] large-scale corruption [and] vote buying during local and general elections. The people knew about these things and they could not accept it. As far as the army staging a coup, we could not just do it on our own. We needed the consent of the people to help us preserve democracy...
...TIME: How do you respond to Western criticism of the coup as a step back for democracy? SONTHI: Everybody wants to walk forward if the path is clear. But if we walk forward and see that there are thorns in front, it is not wise to walk on top of those thorns. It is better to stop, step back and find another way around...
...Elie Khoury, a leading pro-democracy activist who created the "I Love Life" advertising campaign to perk up Lebanese spirits. "We have a Prime Minister who is not performing like a politician." Adds Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a staunch Siniora ally: "He has proved to be a statesman. The coup d'état would have meant that the Lebanese dream of an independent Lebanon, a prosperous Lebanon, would be over...
Siniora's statesmanship seems to work even beyond Lebanon's fragile borders. In January, he scored a political coup by persuading 41 countries at a donor conference in Paris to pledge $7.6 billion for Lebanon's reconstruction. He is also pushing for an international tribunal that will put on trial anyone accused by an ongoing U.N. investigation of political assassinations in Lebanon. The killings of Siniora's boyhood chum Hariri, and of journalists Gebran Tueni, Samir Kassir and a dozen others since October 2004, have been widely blamed on the Syrian regime. The point of the investigation, he explains...
...Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, the decision to remove the government of Laisenia Qarase in a coup on Dec. 5 was painful but simple. "The racist policies of the past," he says, sipping coffee in his office at the Republic of Fiji Military Force Strategic HQ in Suva, "would have taken us to hell-and we would never have come back." For many observers in the outside world, most vocally Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Bainimarama's actions were an unacceptable interference in the democratic process, but the armed forces chief and now interim Prime Minister is unrepentant. "If you want...