Celebrating a dictator's detention

Ansu, a Gambian social media user, challenged the notion that elections cannot remove dictators from power. He tweeted Who says election cannot remove a dictator?

This is not the first time that an Arab dictator has been put on trial.

None of this is to suggest that the US and Europe should abide every move by every corrupt dictator.

This spontaneous question would turn into a painful game, one which you could call sick. We would expect the next kidnapped person to be one of our rebel friends. We would claim to be objective, and ask each other if you were a dictator, or in the process of becoming one, who would you kidnap?

If I were a dictator, or were planning to becoming one, I would consider all of you my enemies, simply because you can read and write, or merely because you can think.

Taylor still faces the prospect of trial and, another former dictator, Saddam Hussein, is now on trial before a national court in Iraq.

At best, the overthrow of Saddam removed a threatening dictator, and substituted a tyranny of the majority for the tyranny of a minority.

The pictures on the streets are to show people that he is a cool King, not a cold dictator like other rulers, on TV he wants the Moroccans to believe his informal title as King of the poor.

His novel Autumn of the Patriarch captures perfectly the moral squalor, political paralysis, and savage ennui that enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long term dictator.

This post is his critique of numerous news reports suggesting that Kim Jong il, North Korea's dictator, was scared to hear of former Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi's, fall.

The 1944 Glorious May Revolution followed a military civilian rebellion and a subsequent civic strike which successfully removed Carlos Arroyo del Río as a dictator from Ecuador's government.

He may lower oil prices for someone close to him, like Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko, and insist on a market price for someone else, but that s basically all he can do.

Economic growth since the Orange Revolution reinforces that reluctance, because an expanding middle class nearly always prefers the flexibility of pluralism to the thump of an authoritarian's fist.

Pakistan has been run by a military dictator for the last 8 years, but the dictator kept some of the trappings of democracy around, like a free press, an opposition, of not just politicians but private armies belonging to anyone who cared, like the Taliban, roaming around the country, and so on.

The death of General Augusto Pinochet, Chile s former military dictator, provides perhaps an appropriate end for a year that saw the Latin American left return to glory, a revival that Hugo Chavez s overwhelming reelection in Venezuela is but the strongest sign.

A notorious example is Nicaragua after the earthquake that leveled the capital, Managua, in December 1972. Nicaragua s dictator, Anastasio Somoza, diverted much of the international assistance meant for the survivors into his own pockets and those of his cronies.

At best, the overthrow of Saddam removed a threatening dictator, and substituted a tyranny of the majority for the tyranny of a minority. But the price has been high in terms of Iraqi lives lost in sectarian fighting.

The death watch for Fidel Castro is something that only Gabriel Garcia Marquez could get right. His novel Autumn of the Patriarch captures perfectly the moral squalor, political paralysis, and savage ennui that enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long term dictator.