Word: dictatorship
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...Still, some Venezuelans were concerned that the people did not turn out to demonstrate their support for the government or at least their rejection of military coups. In a straw poll taken after the coup, the opposition paper El Nacional found that most citizens rejected the idea of a dictatorship -- but thought the country's democratic system has lost some of its fundamental values. "What worries me most," says former President Rafael Caldera, who is now a Senator, "is that I don't find the same fervor for the defense of democratic institutions among the people...
...were complicit in some part of the government, only about 500 people are under investigation, many for schemes involving fraud for personal gain rather than diligence to duty. For some, the trials are part of a national healing process, especially for East Germans, who lived under some form of dictatorship for a half- century. Professor Michael Wolffsohn, who specializes in German-Israeli relations at the University of the Armed Forces in Munich, says, "There can be no amnesty. For our psychological and political health, it is necessary that those murderers are sentenced to at least a year...
...thesis is simple enough. After millenniums of evolution, revolution and war, the forces of freedom are finally triumphing over those of dictatorship. The bad news is that the combination of market economics and elected government, now breaking out all over, is the best we can do; since we have arrived, we have nowhere else to go. We may end up "secure and self- absorbed," suffering from "the boredom of peace and prosperity," devoid of the "striving spirit" that gives humanity its sense of direction. Homo politicus is on the brink of becoming "the last man" -- the ultimate couch potato, "less...
...authority to dissolve parliament and declare a state of emergency. Should the fundamentalists achieve a two-thirds majority, they will have enough votes to force constitutional changes and override presidential vetoes. Jean Leca, a leading French expert on Algeria, warns that in such an event, strict social control and dictatorship are likely to follow. Other analysts predict that the military, which is committed to a modernizing, secular state, will thwart such ambitions...
...religious dictatorship would not sit well even among Algeria's fundamentalists, mostly Sunnis who do not exalt clerics to the same degree that Iran's Shi'ites do today. "The concept of theocracy is not something which has roots in Sunni society," says Professor Mary-Jane Deeb of American University's School of International Service in Washington. Algeria's former colonial ties to France also give the country a Western complexion that cannot be easily erased. Most Algerians speak French, many are exposed to European culture through French television and have relatives among their millions of compatriots now living...