Stephen’s view
When the democracy advocacy group Freedom House started operating in 1973, it only considered 44 countries to be "free". Since then, that number has doubled, to 88. This is great news. Despite some recent setbacks, the general trajectory of the world is that more people are able to decide their own futures.
However, there are still around sixty countries that The Economist Democracy Index considers "authoritarian regimes".
Most of these are authoritarian regimes that pretend to be democracies, by holding elections, and appearing like there is a political opposition.
In Russia, there are elections, however everyone knows that Putin will win. All true opposition has been imprisoned, exiled or murdered.
The only interesting thing to watch in Azerbaijan's elections is what ridiculous percentage of votes Ilham Aliyev receives. He got 92% last time. I wonder if he can beat his score next time?
Until now, Nicaragua was one of these countries which performed being a democracy despite the increasingly iron grip that President Daniel Ortega has had since returning to power in 2007.
But over the last few months, Ortega seems to have decided that Nicaragua will stop pretending. In July, at a rally he said bluntly* "there will be no more elections". It doesn't get much clearer than that! And this week, the National Assembly, which is controlled by Ortega's Sandinista party, has voted to ban opposition parties from participating in elections, effectively turning Nicaragua into a one-party state.
Nicaragua has now joined a small group of authoritarian states like North Korea and the Taliban's Afghanistan, in which the country doesn't even bother to pretend that people have the right to choose their leadership or their laws.
Luckily, Nicaragua is an outlier in Central America. Fifty years ago, Costa Rica was the only democracy. Today, Nicaragua is the only dictatorship.
Have a great weekend.
Stephen
P.S. *Bluntly means being direct, without trying to be polite!
P.P.S. In September, lots of people restart their education. Do you know someone who is learning English and might like this newsletter? Please, forward it to them!
