The last dictator?
BACK in 1999, in the aftermath of the coup coordinated from a cockpit, I found myself among a tiny minority of compadres and confrères who were appalled by the nature…
Party dictatorship?
AS the marathon television transmissions continue to report remark after remark of the Supreme Court matched only by the running commentary of a cricket match on the edge, one thing…
India’s descent into dictatorship
General elections will be held in India from April 19, 2024 to June 1, 2024 to elect the 543 members of the 18th Lok Sabha. The BJP is on Mission…
Deepening the Zia dictatorship
In my last article, ‘Remembering 1977’ (Aug 29), I highlighted how the year 1977 became a turning point in Pakistan’s history. Within 40 days after his military coup on July…
Crisis of dictatorship – Part II
It is noteworthy that in 1922 Belarus was one of the four units that formed the Soviet Union. And in 1991 three of the four units – Russia, Belarus and…
Crisis of dictatorship: Part – I
Exactly 30 years ago, towards the end of 1990, one of the two superpowers of that time – the Soviet Union – was facing an existential crisis. Though the Soviet…
Military dictatorship vs civilian rule
In a recent interview, former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf claimed that the country made progress only under military rule and civilian governments mostly "let the nation down." These of…
On the path to dictatorship
Dictators always need to justify the concentration of power within themselves. Josef Stalin, for example, argued that because political power belonged to the Soviet proletariat and that the Communist Party…
Despite ‘hello dictator’, EU struggles to curb Hungary’s Orban
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban took it as a joke but his supporters at home were furious when European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saluted him with an audible "hello dictator"…
A dictator is a dictator
Former Pakistan army chief Pervez Musharraf ousted an elected civilian government from power, and usurped power illegally, holding on to it for over ten years, but there are those in…
