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Supporters react during an election campaign rally for Sajith Premadasa, leader of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party, ahead of the presidential election, in Colombo, Sri Lanka September 18, 2024.
Sri Lankans go to polls at pivotal moment for economy
On Sept. 21, Sri Lanka will hold its first presidential vote since the spectacular economic meltdown of 2022, when the pandemic-scarred country defaulted on its massive debts, imports dried up, and widespread shortages of basic goods developed. Images of angry protesters invading the luxurious estates of the president and prime minister appeared on television screens around the world.
Following a government shakeup, new President Ranil Wickremesinghe negotiated a bailout with the IMF that helped to stabilize the situation. He is asking voters this weekend for another five years in office to continue the work of rebuilding the economy, but the tough terms of the IMF program have undermined his support.
We asked Eurasia Group expert Rahul Bhatia what to expect from the upcoming election.
What are the main issues for voters? Is the IMF program a campaign issue?
Economic issues have naturally taken center stage in the election as Sri Lanka continues its fragile recovery. While shortages of everyday essentials such as food, fuel, and medicines have subsided, there is still widespread discontent over the increased cost of living and reduced welfare programs. The IMF bail-out mandated austerity measures such as tax hikes and subsidy cuts, which have increased hardships for many Sri Lankans.
As a result, most candidates are campaigning on promises such as cutting taxes, raising the salaries of government employees, providing subsidies for low-income groups and farmers, and lowering fuel and electricity prices. None of the frontrunners have opposed the IMF program in principle, but most have promised to renegotiate it.
How far has the economy come since the crisis of 2022?
The economy returned to modest growth in the second half of 2023, and inflation, too, has eased to normal levels from its peak of nearly 70% at the height of the crisis. Nevertheless, economic output declined by 9.5% over 2022 and 2023, and it will take time for it to return to pre-crisis levels. About one-quarter of the population still lives below the poverty line, as the economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures have disproportionately affected low and middle-income families. Overall, Sri Lanka’s economic situation remains precarious, and it will need a stable government to complete its recovery.
Who are the frontrunners in this election?
Amid a field of 38 contestants, there are four clear frontrunners: the incumbent Wickremesinghe, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, the leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and Namal Rajapaksa, scion of the Rajapaksa family that once dominated the island's politics but has been largely discredited by the economic crisis. (Then-president President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country after angry protesters invaded his residence in July 2022.) This means the presidential election will effectively be a three-way contest between Wickremesinghe, Premadasa, and Dissanayake.
What are they offering?
Veteran politician Wickremesinghe is campaigning on steering the country out of its worst economic crisis in modern times. Meanwhile, Premadasa and Dissanayake have sought to exploit the unpopularity of his austerity measures and have promised to ease the burden for Sri Lankans. They have also leveled charges of corruption against Wickremesinghe.
Premadasa comes from a well-known political family, but Dissanayake was a marginal player in Sri Lankan politics until recently. His popularity has risen rapidly over the last three years on the back of the protest movement that ousted Gotabaya Rajapaksa and an effective grassroots campaign. While Premadasa enjoys the support of the country’s Tamil minority, Dissanayake has captured the imagination of the youth.
What are the challenges the next president will face keeping the recovery on track?
To retain the IMF’s support, the government will have to reach a budget surplus, which could prove challenging given the welfare measures the candidates have proposed. The next president will have to balance improving the everyday lives of Sri Lankans and reducing the country’s debt burden.
The next president will also face a parliament dominated by the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka People’s Front, which was elected in 2020. Premadasa and Dissanayake, in particular, would find it difficult to pass legislation without a parliamentary majority. Both would thus likely call for parliamentary elections before the end of the year as one of their first actions.
Will these elections reverberate beyond Sri Lanka’s borders?
Given Sri Lanka’s towering debt obligations with foreign creditors and strategic location in the Indian Ocean, many countries have a vested interest in the island nation’s political and economic stability. India would prefer a Premadasa or Wickremesinghe presidency, though it has indicated it would work with any of the four frontrunners. Apart from political stability, New Delhi will prioritize limiting China’s influence on the island—a concern the US and Japan share. It will also seek to bolster connectivity between India and Sri Lanka and push the next president to grant the Tamil provinces a degree of autonomy.
China continues to have a sizeable economic footprint in Sri Lanka, but its influence has waned with that of the Rajapaksas. Former president and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya were close to Beijing and oversaw a range of Chinese infrastructure projects on the island, partially contributing to its debt problems (China still accounts for about half of Sri Lanka's bilateral debt). Nevertheless, Dissanayake is thought to have close ties to China, and if he becomes president, it could allow China to regain some of its influence.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor at Eurasia Group.
People celebrate the resignation of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 5, 2024.
PM Hasina resigns, flees Bangladesh amid violence
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned early Monday and reportedly fled the country amid violent mass protests. On Sunday, around 100 people, including at least 13 police officers, were killed in clashes across the country, as security forces struggled to contain some of the worst violence since independence in 1971.
As thousands of people streamed into the heart of the capital Dhaka today, the military announced it would hold a press conference in the late afternoon. By around 3 p.m. local time, Hasina was spotted at the airport, and television stations broadcast video of demonstrators storming Hasina’s official residence and looting it before the clock struck 4 p.m. The army announced her resignation minutes later.
What happens now? Bangladeshi Chief of Army Staff Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, announced that the army has consulted with the leaders of major political parties and civil society organs and will request the formation of a caretaker government.
Hasina had been in charge for 20 of the last 28 years. Her legacy, and that of her father, slain independence movement leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, run deep in the corridors of power in Dhaka. It is unclear where Hasina has gone (India is rumored). We’ll be watching to see whether demonstrators are satiated by the caretaker government, and whether Bangladesh’s hard-earned manufacturing success can be sustained through this tumultuous political period.India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the media on the first day of the five-day long special session in New Delhi, India, September 18, 2023.
Is India’s Narendra Modi preparing a historic surprise?
On Monday, India opened its first special session of parliament since 2017, and expectations are rising that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will use the short session to make an historic – and maybe controversial -- announcement.
There’s precedent for that assumption. Six years ago, Modi used a special session to roll out a nationwide goods and services tax to help centralize India’s economy. The resulting process didn’t run smoothly, but many analysts now credit the move with sharply boosting internal trade across India, strengthening India’s overall economic performance.
What might this year’s announcement be? The most intense speculation centers on three possibilities.
First, that Modi will change India’s international name to “Bharat”, a controversial switch away from the English name to its Sanskrit and Hindi one.
Second, that the government may announce that a third of its parliamentary seats will be reserved for women.
And third, that Modi may try to amend the country’s constitution to align the calendar for federal and state elections. That move, say Modi’s critics, would give his nationally-ruling BJP more momentum to overcome opposition parties, which continue to dominate in India’s wealthier southern states.
China in the (South Asian) ‘hood
As China faces pressure and criticism from the West for not changing its “neutral” stance despite Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, Beijing is trying to create space for itself by shoring up old allies and mending fences in its rough neighborhood.
So while US President Joe Biden was doing the rounds in Europe to rally NATO last week, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was on a whirlwind tour of South Asia, making moves that signal how China wants to operate in its own unstable region — even extending an olive branch to its rival, India.
Wang’s itinerary says it all. In Islamabad, he attended the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation hosted by longtime China pal Pakistan, marking the first time China was invited as a guest of the 57-member bloc (Chinese state media heralded the invitation to mean the Islamic world was giving a “clean bill of health for China’s treatment of [Uighur] Muslims” at home). Then, Wang made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he met leaders of the new Taliban regime.
Finally, Beijing’s top diplomat landed in New Delhi for his first trip to India since Chinese and Indian troops faced off in a deadly Himalayan skirmish in 2020 (the Indians made it clear that the visit was initiated by China). After attempting to thaw ties with India, he topped off the tour by dropping by Nepal, where China is competing for influence with the US.
Asia watchers see Wang’s South Asian diplomatic hustle as a necessary response to the difficult situation China finds itself in regionally, considering Beijing’s investments and relations aren’t doing too well there.
“I see Wang Yi’s South Asia swing as more of a damage assessment tour,” says Sameer Lalwani, senior fellow for Asia Strategy at the Stimson Center.
Ties with India are chilly. China’s $65 billion economic corridor in Pakistan is stalled. Afghanistan still poses a threat. Nepal may be slipping away, and perpetually broke Sri Lanka is looking to Beijing for a bailout.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions during a Reuters interview in Munich, Germany.Reuters
“[Wang’s] visit to Pakistan came as Islamabad is in the throes of yet another political crisis,” Lalwani explains. “His surprise visit to their mutual Taliban partners in Afghanistan allowed him to see firsthand the economic and governance disaster they have become and the security liability they are creating for Beijing.”
Tanvi Madan, head of the India Project at Brookings and author of Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped US-India Relations during the Cold War, sees Wang’s trip within the context of China’s double-trouble moment, globally and locally.
First up is China’s position with regard to the Russia-Ulkraine war, “where it is feeling pressure from several sides about how closely it is backing or seems to be backing Russia,” Madan says. The second aspect, meanwhile, involves China hitting “headwinds for its interests in South Asia as a whole.”
China and India find themselves on the rare same page on Russia. Both New Delhi and Beijing have refused to condemn Moscow, and they continue to deal with Russia despite sanctions. But that’s where the similarities end.
While China is India’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade hitting the $95 billion mark in 2021-22, trade remains heavily tilted in Beijing’s favor. Also, China has for decades armed and supported Pakistan, India’s archrival.
Since their 2020 military clash, Delhi has been tightening the screws on Chinese companies, banning certain imports and apps. But now, China wants to continue cooperating while setting the border tensions aside.
Beijing has tried to spin Wang’s trip to Delhi as a fence-mending mission. The Foreign Ministry’s handout says “China does not pursue the so-called ‘unipolar Asia’ and respects India’s traditional role in the region,” adding that “if China and India spoke with one voice, the whole world will listen.”
However, wooing India while trying to flex muscle in South Asia isn’t going to be an easy courtship for Beijing. Not in the mood for being a cheap date, New Delhi has indicated that things aren’t going to go back to business as usual unless the border tensions are resolved and China disengages militarily. And as for Wang’s wish that the two countries speak with “one voice,” India’s foreign minister clarified that India had its own points of view about the international order.
Those points of view may converge with China’s on issues like Ukraine (both sides have demanded a cease-fire), but not on other security and trade issues, such as Kashmir, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or the Quad.
As its South Asian interests and influence grow, China might think of itself as a major player — but India begs to differ. This isn’t China’s ‘hood. Not yet.
“They’re overlapping peripheries. China might consider [South Asia] its ‘hood,” says Madan. “But India has considered South Asia its ‘hood for a lot longer than Beijing has.”
When a giant sneezes: How the US response to 9/11 reshaped the world
In the narrowest sense, the 9/11 attacks were something that happened only in New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania. But how the US responded — unleashing an open-ended Global War on Terror, launching wars and nation-building occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and dramatically reshaping the government's powers of surveillance at home — sent shockwaves around the world.
In many places, the effects are still felt: in the shattering of the MIddle East, in the rise of China, in the upheavals of South Asia, or in the newly complicated relationships between Washington and old allies in Europe and Turkey. And remember when the US and Russia were — for a few weeks there — seemingly the closest of friends?
We asked analysts at Eurasia Group, our parent company, to give us a quick recap of how 9/11 and its aftermath have affected the regions they cover. Enjoy.
China: The golden opportunity — Neil Thomas
The Global War on Terror that Washington chose to pursue after 9/11 led to a sustained US foreign policy focus on the Middle East that distracted significantly from China's rise as a regional heavyweight and a global power. Before becoming US president in January 2001, George W. Bush backed his predecessor Bill Clinton's campaign to establish permanent normal trading relations with China and support its admission to the World Trade Organization, but he promised a tougher stance that treated Beijing as a "strategic competitor." That attitude changed after 9/11.
Beijing presented itself as an ally in the Global War on Terror and the Bush administration was eager for international cooperation. Meanwhile, China experienced phenomenal economic growth that enabled Beijing to expand its international influence, modernize the People's Liberation Army, and consolidate contentious territorial claims — all without significant pushback from Washington. Beijing even persuaded the US government to designate a Uyghur militant group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization (a decision that was reversed last November).
That move to target ETIM reflected Beijing's post-9/11 reframing of its Uyghur ethnic minority, a traditionally Muslim group concentrated in China's western Xinjiang region, as a potential terrorist threat. Especially after ethnic violence in Xinjiang in 2009 and deadly attacks by Uighur terrorists in 2011 and 2013, Chinese leaders increasingly deployed rhetoric and techniques from the Global War on Terror to pursue repressive policies of "counter-extremism" and "de-radicalization." This campaign evolved into a wholesale crackdown on Uyghur identity and culture that includes the forced detention of millions of Uyghurs in "vocational education and training centers."
The Middle East: Two decades of upheaval — Sofia Meranto & Ahmed Morsy
Twenty years after 9/11, the Middle East is still grappling with its impacts. A highly tumultuous period followed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a decade later the Arab Spring sent another round of shockwaves across the region.
The Iraq War, right in the heart of the Middle East, was perhaps the most jarring for regional leaders. The subsequent chaos bred wider instability and spawned the birth of terrorist groups like ISIS, further fracturing states like Iraq and Syria.
The US Global War on Terror and its policy of "either you are with us, or against us" shaped domestic policies in pivotal ways as well. On the one hand, it created space for authoritarian leaders to crack down not only on extremist groups but on other critics in their midst as well. But on the other, the subsequent US democratization agenda pressured some to make cosmetic liberalizing reforms.
Meanwhile, despite efforts to dissociate the war on terror from a war with Islam, the perception in the Middle East is that Islamophobia rose palpably in the West after 9/11.
Today, Washington is clearly exploring ways to draw down its involvement in the Middle East. Taken together with the messy Afghanistan exit, this has raised concerns for Gulf countries, which have historically relied heavily on the US security umbrella. And there are a number of unresolved regional issues — including Lebanon's collapse, Syria's post-war role, Iran's regional and nuclear ambitions, and the moribund Middle East peace process — that will demand that regional powers develop ways to coordinate better and lower tensions.
Lastly, twenty years after the attack on the US, the reach of al-Qaeda reach is undoubtedly more limited — as is the threat of ISIS compared to a decade ago — but the jury is still out on how serious a terrorist threat could emerge out of Afghanistan, where the Taliban is now back in power.
Turkey: Ties in Tatters — Emre Peker
The 9/11 attacks coincided with a sea change in Turkish politics. After a decade marred by economic crises, terrorism, and social upheavals, Turkish voters rejected mainstream parties in November 2002 elections, sweeping Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party to power. And while Turkey had been quick to support NATO's Afghanistan mission post-9/11, the new government refused to back George W. Bush's 2003 foray into Iraq. That marked an unusual break with the US, which would only grow in the coming years.
While Ankara remained sensitive to security threats from Islamist radicals, Erdogan did away with the old establishment's strict secularism. That provided openings for cooperation with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas — despite US protestations. And amid growing hostility towards Washington in the Middle East during the Bush years, Turkey emerged as a regional soft power, leveraging its status as a majority-Muslim NATO member with aspirations to join the EU.
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he tried to bolster ties with Ankara as part of a broader effort to repair Washington's terrible image in the region. That push, however, didn't survive into Obama's second term as Ankara and Washington increasingly came to blows over Syria and other issues.
As Turkey dropped its broadly neutral foreign policies to pursue regime change in Syria, throw its weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, intervene in the Libyan conflict, and stake out claims in contested Eastern Mediterranean waters, Erdogan found himself increasingly at odds with Middle Eastern rivals and major powers alike.
Tensions even grew between Turkey and its NATO partners, over Ankara's tactical partnerships with NATO rival Russia. Where the Trump administration largely enabled Erdogan to operate unchecked, Biden is looking to opportunistically engage Turkey despite ongoing disagreements on issues ranging from where Turkey buys its weapons to how Erdogan has weakened Turkey's democracy.
Overall,9/11 — coupled with political trends in the US and Turkey — left the once-strong Washington-Ankara alliance in tatters, a condition from which it is unlikely to recover any time soon.
Russia and Central Asia: Remember the good old days? — Alex Brideau
Given how bad US-Russia ties are these days, it's hard to remember that things between Washington and Moscow were actually pretty good in the aftermath of 9/11. President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to contact Bush after the planes hit the towers. Intelligence sharing and Russian support for US bases in Central Asia as part of the Afghanistan invasion soon followed.
Russia was, at the time, in the third year of a renewed conflict against separatists in Chechnya who were fighting under the banner of Islam and who would soon wage terrorist attacks of their own elsewhere in Russia. Putin promptly framed that conflict, which had fueled his own political rise, as part of the West's Global War on Terror. Central Asian authoritarians and democratic governments alike worked with the US to protect against threats of terrorism in their own countries. Even after that cooperation stopped, regional leaders continued to repress any groups that might pose risks to their governments, often by framing them as "extremists."
US-Russia cooperation did not last long. By 2007, Moscow's opposition to the invasion of Iraq, combined with resentment of US policy in other areas, led Putin to blast Washington in a speech in Munich, and elsewhere to draw a jawdropping comparison between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany. The relationship deteriorated further after Russia's 2008 war with Georgia and collapsed almost entirely after the Russian seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014.
The Kremlin meanwhile took advantage of Washington's increasing aversion to direct engagement with the Middle East in the 2010s to build up its own presence in the region. Moscow intervened directly in the Syrian civil war and indirectly in post-Qaddafi Libya, while trying to build up new economic and security relationships with a range of partners.
In 2021, with the Taliban back in control of Afghanistan, Russia and Central Asia face similar concerns about security and regional stability to those of twenty years ago. But this time around, cooperation with the US is sure to be much less intensive and enthusiastic.
Europe: Solidarity and skepticism — Naz Masraff
Europe was united in horror and solidarity after the September 11 attacks twenty years ago. In a now famous essay, the editor of the prominent French daily Le Monde proclaimed, "we are all Americans." He wasn't referring to France alone.
To any European country with the right capabilities, joining the US in the War on Terror seemed an obvious choice at first. Bin Laden's presumed location, and intelligence of Al Qaeda bases were enough to convince even a reluctant Germany to send troops to Afghanistan under the self-defense terms of the UN Charter.
But the rift with the US over Iraq sowed division within Europe itself. The UK, along with Spain and most future member states in Central and Eastern Europe, backed Washington, while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the more reluctant France and Germany as "Old Europe." The EU's great eastward expansion of 2004 still took place, but Iraq was probably the first moment at which it became clear that a common EU security and defense policy might be impossible.
Anti-American sentiment — which had retreated to the eccentric margins after September 11 — became the norm as chaos unfolded in Iraq and terrorist attacks happened on European soil: Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. EU leaders and citizens alike tended to blame the chaos on President Bush.
To this day, Europe is still grappling with the consequences of decisions made in the aftermath of September 11. Afghans and Iraqis formed a large part of the wave of refugees in the 2015 migration crisis. And just as EU capitals scaled back their operations in Afghanistan, new terrorist threats forced them to deploy in the Sahel and over Syria.
Moreover, twenty years after 9/11, a new debate is roiling Europe: whether to develop more strategic autonomy in ways that would move the continent away from the familiar US-backed security architecture. Europe is certainly willing to be more assertive now, but it's hard to see the EU developing real strategic autonomy from Washington and broader geopolitical independence any time soon.
South Asia: Pivotal Pakistan — Peter Mumford
Apart from Afghanistan, which is its own story entirely, the post-9/11 impacts on South Asia were most acute in the rival nuclear-armed states of Pakistan and India. Pakistan, of course, became central to events in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror, with Washington often placing more emphasis on its (complex, sometimes strained) relationship with Islamabad than it did on ties with India. US dependency on Pakistan to maintain military operations in Afghanistan also became an issue of concern in New Delhi.
That said, India was happy to see Pakistan tied up with issues on its northern border with Afghanistan. India also benefited from a change in how the US and international community viewed terrorism. When Pakistan-backed terrorists attacked India's parliament in December 2001, Pakistan was shocked to find the US not calling for restraint by India, something that it would almost certainly have done prior to 9/11. India was also pleased to see the US pay more attention to broader threats posed by Islamist terrorism.
Following the killing of Osama bin Laden (in Pakistan, no less) and subsequent winding down of US military operations in Afghanistan, Washington's attention increasingly shifted from Pakistan to India, with US-India relations becoming closer in recent years. But that relationship has also deepened because of mutual concerns about China's growing power — something that would have happened regardless. In some ways, 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars distracted the US from improving bilateral ties with India sooner than it did.
Southeast Asia: Terrorism faded, but China arrived — Peter Mumford
The years following 9/11 saw a sharp increase in the Islamist terrorist threat in Southeast Asia, with al-Qaeda affiliates and other extremist groups seemingly emboldened. This was most noticeable in Indonesia, with the Bali bombings in 2002, and attacks on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009 — which killed both Indonesians and foreigners. The Philippines also experienced a rise in terrorism threats, as did, to a lesser extent, Malaysia.
US counterterrorism assistance, in the form of funding, training, and intel sharing, helped to reduce (though certainly not eliminate) the terrorist threat in the region. That said, the US-led global war on terror, and particular the war in Iraq, increased anti-US sentiment in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia — to some extent this also strengthened Islamist political parties in these countries, though other factors such as rising inequality and intensified identity politics, were also at play. These sentiments softened, though were reignited to some extent by Donald Trump's "Muslim ban".
In the meantime, with the US distracted by the global war on terror, a rising China was able more easily to extend its influence in the region, even beyond these Muslim-majority countries. President Barack Obama sought to address this through his somewhat stillborn "pivot to Asia" but subsequent administrations have been forced to reckon more directly with Chinese competition.
What about where you live? How did 9/11 or the US response change things -- either in the immediate aftermath or over the past 20 years?
What We’re Watching: Monsoon hits South Asia, Russians steal vaccine research, criminal president gone in Suriname
South Asia under water: A deadly monsoon has pummeled large swaths of South Asia in recent days, wiping out entire villages and causing families to seek safety on rooftops in scenes reminiscent of the deadly tsunami that hit the region in 2004. Millions of people across India, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Nepal have been displaced because of heavy floods and landslides — and meteorologists say these harsh weather conditions are unlikely to change in the coming weeks. So far, the state of Assam in northeast India has been hit particularly hard by flash floods, affecting some 4.3 million residents. Meanwhile, the monsoon has also devastated refugee camps in Cox's Bazar in southern Bangladesh, home to 750,000 Rohingya refugees. Every year, seasonal floods hit South Asia, causing death and destruction. But the inundations this year, the worst in decades, come as many of these countries are grappling with explosive COVID-19 outbreaks that are crippling already weak healthcare systems.
Are Russians trying to swipe COVID-19 vaccine data? The US, the UK and Canada on Thursday accused Russian hackers of trying to steal research on coronavirus vaccines. The allegation puts a spotlight again on Russian dirty tricks in Western countries, this time to unfairly benefit from a global effort to develop a vaccine in the near term. The Russian government has, as usual, denied any involvement, but the US National Security Agency has singled out Cozy Bear, a hacking group linked to Russian espionage and believed to be responsible for the 2016 cyberattack on the US Democratic National Committee server. Apart from Russia, the US previously suggested that China and Iran were trying to get their hands on the vaccine research. All this comes amid a growing debate over which countries will get it first, how doses can be distributed equitably — and even more importantly which countries finally decide to hoard the vaccine or share it with the rest of the world.
Suriname boots its criminal president: Former military dictator Desi Bouterse is finally out of power in Suriname, after losing the presidential election to opposition leader Chan Santokhi. Voters punished Bouterse — who has ruled the former Dutch colony for most of the last 40 years — for his rampant corruption, economic mismanagement and abysmal handing of the coronavirus pandemic. What's more, in 1999 he was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in jail for cocaine trafficking in the Netherlands, and just months ago to another 20 years for ordering the 1982 killing of 15 political enemies in Suriname. However, Bouterse won't end up behind bars if he stays away from the EU, and an arrest warrant has yet to be issued for his domestic conviction. Santokhi, a former justice minister and police chief, now has two priorities: reorienting Suriname's foreign policy away from neighboring Venezuela (and China) to pursue closer ties with the Netherlands, and figuring out how to avoid the "resource curse" from a major new oil discovery.