Travels in the Riel World

Mongolia is not the first place one thinks of when pondering the fate of budding democracies around the world. Heck, how many people could locate Mongolia on a map? Now, though, the country may become known as a poster child for the risks of mixing democracy with vodka.

The charred shells of two Soviet-style buildings rising from the center of this capital stand as a warning of the dangers of mixing vodka with voter frustration.

In a barren land where nomads still gallop across pastures to polling booths, that potent mix led last week to the literal gutting of some of the country’s most prominent political and cultural institutions. Now, with an election in dispute, Mongolia’s fledgling democracy faces its biggest challenge since its birth in 1990.

Following cries of fraud in parliamentary elections — accusations that were disputed by international election observers — hundreds of rioters, many of them drunk, attacked the headquarters of the dominant political party and the neighboring national art gallery on July 1. Fires were started. Five people were killed. More than 1,000 pieces of artwork were destroyed, damaged or looted…

(J)ust as shocking as the violence was the government’s reaction — it declared a four-day state of emergency, sent soldiers into the streets and shut down television and radio stations. The outburst of violence was without precedent in democratic Mongolia, and many here — from sheepherders to business executives — are deeply ashamed of what unfolded.

For nearly two decades now, Mongolia has had one of the few true democracies in northern Asia, a fact which made this outburst of electoral violence there all the more unfortunate.

On the surface, Mongolia is an unlikely place for an experiment in democracy. It is the most sparsely populated country in the world. Half the population still lives in round felt tents called gers, and livestock outnumber humans eight to one.

Yet Mongolia’s literacy rate is 98 percent, a legacy of nearly seven decades of Communist rule. The country held a constitutional referendum in 1990 and a vote in 1992 that led to its first democratic change of Parliament. Since then, it had held peaceful elections every four years — until June 29…

As the country’s leaders grapple with how to resolve the election, everyone knows nothing less than the future of Mongolia is at stake.

“We made our democracy ourselves, we will defend it ourselves,” Oyungerel said. “I love democracy. I want to give this society to my children.”

This past week saw a unique event in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, as residents trekked to the polls for the first time in the country’s history at the behest of the king, who voluntarily decided to give up royal power in order to move his country towards a democratic future. The Washington Post has the story:

Without revolution or bloodshed, this tiny Himalayan kingdom became the world’s newest democracy Monday, as wildflower farmers, traditional healers, Buddhist folk artists and computer engineers voted in their country’s first parliamentary elections, ending a century of absolute monarchy.

In a historic event for this country of 700,000, entire families took to winding mountain roads, traveling in some cases for days in minivans, on horseback and on foot to cast their ballots, marking Bhutan’s transition to a constitutional monarchy.

Despite concerns that Bhutanese would be turned off by the rough-and-tumble world of politics, more than 79 percent of the estimated 318,000 registered voters turned out at polling places.

It was the king, as well as his father and predecessor, who ordered his subjects to vote, in the belief that democracy would foster stability in a country wedged between China and India and known as the Land of the Thunder Dragon…

Before abdicating the throne to his son in 2006, the country’s fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, had taken methodical steps to give power to the people, saying that he believed no leader should be “chosen by birth instead of merit.”

As part of his “gross national happiness” plan, he reformed the country’s feudal system, giving land and jobs to the poorest farmers and launching free health and education systems. He and his Harvard- and Oxford-educated son, King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, remain immensely popular. Many Bhutanese still refer to both father and son as “His Majesty.”…

The fifth king, who is 28, will remain commander in chief of the army and will be able to appoint five members to the upper house of parliament. Many Bhutanese said they hoped his opinions would continue to carry enormous weight.

Although the outcome is still far from certain, there are now scattered whispers of hope that the two sides in Kenya’s ongoing electoral dispute may soon be able to reach some sort of power-sharing agreement. But regardless of any future political reconciliation, it’s hard not to feel that something irretrievable has been lost in Kenya, which until recently had been considered one of Africa’s most stable and tourist-friendly countries. The outpouring of violence has torn communities apart (for some eye-opening on-the-ground reporting from Kenya, check out this blog by Anne Holmes) and it will take a massive and lengthy effort to stitch everything together again.

For a sense of just how much everything has changed in the blink of an eye, first check out these short excerpts about Kenya from my recent book. First, driving through Kenya:

Only occasionally during the next week did we run into a small city, at places like Nakuru or Narok. On this day, we drove north past wheat-colored fields, banana and acacia trees and coffee plantations. The road took us through rolling foothills of green trees and deep red soil. These colors, and especially the red hue of the earth, became my lasting images of Kenya.

 

One of the biggest things I noticed as we drove were the number of people on the streets. Everywhere, even in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere between towns, we passed dozens of locals going about their daily lives. Many of them, especially the children, would wave as our van drove past.

And then at Lake Nakuru National Park:

We weren’t prepared for the full impact of seeing tens of thousands of pink flamingos strutting around the perimeter of a single lake. This was one of the most visually interesting spectacles we saw on the safari. From a distance, it appeared the water was ringed with stretches of pink sand. But as we approached, it became apparent this was an illusion, caused by the presence of more pink flamingoes than we ever knew existed, all living together on the edge of a lake…

 

We walked along the beachfront and gaped in amazement at the thousands of pink flamingoes squeezed together in front of us – feeding, walking, flying, landing…Interestingly, as we walked towards the birds, who formed a ring perhaps 15 or 20 feet deep along the perimeter of the lake, they edged away from us in unison. They moved calmly, and not in panic, but a giant pink wave would invariably form opposite whichever direction we moved…

 

It was raining fairly steadily at this point, but we were entranced and didn’t want to leave the flamingos. So we stood there for long minutes on the edge of the lake, hoods pulled over our heads, no sound but for the clamor of birds and the drumming of raindrops, thousands of pink flamingos forming a dreamlike picture in front of us, and we breathed in the sweet smell of rain on a warm African afternoon.

Now, compare those scenes with this recent description of the current situation in Nakuru, Kenya: 

In Nakuru, furious mobs rule the streets, burning homes, brutalizing people and expelling anyone not in their ethnic group, all with complete impunity.

On Saturday, hundreds of men prowled a section of the city with six-foot iron bars, poisoned swords, clubs, knives and crude circumcision tools. Boys carried gladiator-style shields and women strutted around with sharpened sticks…

One month after a deeply flawed election, Kenya is tearing itself apart along ethnic lines, despite intense international pressure on its leaders to compromise and stop the killings.

Nakuru, the biggest town in the beautiful Rift Valley, is the scene of a mass migration now moving in two directions. Luos are headed west, Kikuyus are headed east, and packed buses with mattresses strapped on top pass one another in the road, with the bewildered children of the two ethnic groups staring out the windows at one another.

How sad.

A few weeks ago, I had some posts (here and here) about the Kenyan elections and the influence of tribalism in that country’s politics. Now, the Washington Post has an excellent article that explores that topic in more depth and examines the role of tribal identity in shaping the political and world views of many Kenyans. A key excerpt:

Tribe in Kenya is a matter of culture and tradition, a designation — often invisible to the casual observer — that defines social networks and political power and at times serves as the foundation for stereotypes used by politicians to manipulate and divide the electorate…

Of the dozens of tribes in Kenya, the Kikuyu and to a lesser degree the Luo and the Kalenjin…have remained the primary political forces since independence. At the same time, there is a public consensus that tribalism undermines the founding idea of Kenya as one nation. Any politician hoping to appear as a statesman deplores tribalism in public, even though Kenyans tend to vote in tribal blocs. In certain circles, it is considered rude to ask someone’s tribe because it is not supposed to matter.

Though the Kikuyu and Luo have different ethnic roots, they are virtually indistinguishable physically — so much so that during recent election violence, rioting gangs often asked Kenyans for their national identity cards. It is possible to identify a person’s tribe by his or her name.

But neither ethnicity nor religion, which does not divide the groups, explains the sharply divergent perceptions that Kikuyus and Luos have of their place in Kenyan society. Tribe, woven as it is into day-to-day life, is the way many members of each group explain their successes and failures in a country that until the recent elections was considered the most stable in East Africa.

Kenya has erupted into violence after a disputed election. The Pakistani political party of Benazir Bhutto has named her 19-year-old son as the party’s new leader.  This post is not meant to judge the politics of other countries. After all, the U.S. faced some problems of its own with a hotly disputed election seven years ago and, as Andrew Sullivan notes, we’re also dealing with a few American political dynasties at the moment.

Rather, what is interesting about both of these stories is that it emphasizes the role of culture in the government and politics of every country. 

In Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was named his mother’s successor at only 19 years of age, but in keeping with the dynastic traditions that are common across South Asia. His mother had herself taken over the reigns of the Pakistan Peoples Party from her father. As the New York Times writes:

The decision to place burden of blood and history on the son reflects … an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics — three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well.

In Kenya, meanwhile, the eruption of violence is not only over a disputed election result, but also over tribal grievances that have spilled into politics. The Washington Post reports:

But an undercurrent of tribalism ran through the campaign season, with Odinga accusing Kibaki of favoring his own ethnic group and raising suspicions that his inner circle would never relinquish power…

As the sun set Sunday, thousands of ardent Odinga supporters raged through the muddy, foot-worn paths of Nairobi’s biggest slum, Kibera, wielding nail-studded sticks, heavy rocks, hammers, machetes and flasks of alcohol, setting ablaze a market run mainly by Kibaki’s tribe, the Kikuyu, and continuing on…

The head of Kenya’s Red Cross Society, Abbas Gullet, told AP that the homes of many Kikuyu families had been attacked around the country and some of the residents were seeking refuge in police stations.

Two countries, two political systems, two sets of issues. But scratch the surface and you find cultural issues underpinning both stories.

Now that Argentina has followed Chile in electing a woman president, some observers are wondering if this portends a new era of female political power in South America.

Here in the land of machismo, where leaders were long supposed to conform to the standard of the strong-armed military man in epaulettes, a rising wave of leaders is working on a new 21st-century cliche: la presidenta.

The movement started at South America’s southern tip, where Chile elected Michelle Bachelet president last year. Argentina followed this week, choosing first lady Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as its first elected female president…

The gender-specific rallying cry now seems poised to spread north. In Paraguay, outgoing President Nicanor Duarte is backing former education minister Blanca Ovelar as his replacement in next year’s presidential election. And in Brazil, many political observers say that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seems to be grooming his chief of staff and former energy minister — a woman named Dilma Rousseff — to carry his party’s torch when his term ends in 2010…

But the possibility that she could become one has South Americans confronting a prospect that just a few years ago would have seemed utterly impossible: a continent where the majority of the population is led by women.

Interestingly, though, while South American women are achieving success in the political arena, they have not been quite as successful in the business world.

According to the World Economic Forum’s ranking of 116 countries in terms of gender gaps, opportunities for women in South America still lagged behind those of women in many other parts of the world in 2006. Argentina ranked 42nd in terms of equal opportunities for women, Paraguay 65th, Brazil 68th and Chile 79th, according to the survey.

But in terms of political empowerment for women, Argentina jumped to 23rd on the list, ahead of the United States and Canada.

In 1993, the country of Czechoslovakia agreed to an amicable divorce and divided into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Some observers are now wondering if a similar future awaits Belgium. Although the country has survived for almost two centuries as a federation with Flemish and French-speaking provinces, politicians there are having increasing difficulties in forming a national government. Time magazine reports on the issue.

Composed of French and Flemish speakers who share little common culture, Belgium has always been a bit of an odd duck. Its viability as a nation has been regularly questioned since its founding in 1830, but perhaps never as much as in the last three months. Since national elections in June, the country’s politicians have proved unable to form a national government, causing more and more Belgians to wonder whether the country can — or should — stay united.

In the past, politicians from both sides of Belgium’s language divide have shown a legendary capacity for cobbling together seemingly impossible coalitions. But the will seems to have dried up this year as trust has shattered between Flanders in the north and Wallonia in the south…

The crisis has stoked a media frenzy about whether divorce is in the air. Every day seems to bring a new twist on how Belgium could emulate Czechoslovakia’s “velvet divorce,” how the country’s spoils might be divvied up, and even whether the split halves would be interested in joining with France or the Netherlands.

Not everyone is convinced that those concerns are real. “If you believe the media, this country is in a state of permanent civil war,” says Dave Sinardet, a political scientist at the University of Antwerp. “This is more a crisis of government than of the country. I expect the parties to reach some sort of solution soon — as they have done in the past — and when everyone calms down, we should see all this talk about splits and independence evaporate.”

Interestingly, the biggest stumbling block towards a separation could be the city of Brussels, as the Associated Press notes:

What would become of Brussels is anybody’s guess, and for the moment, neither the Flemish nor the Walloons are too keen on plunging into a detailed debate on the issue.

It is hard to see Flanders giving up Brussels, the city of 1 million where the majority of people speak French. But it is equally hard to imagine that Wallonia could survive without it.

France has a new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who on Sunday defeated Segolene Royal, the first woman ever to compete for France’s highest office. No matter who won the election, the new president was bound to represent an interesting and dramatic break from the French political tradition. Both candidates were born after World War II, thus representing a generational change, and Sarkozy is the son of immigrants.

The Washington Post has an analysis of the election and what it may mean for France.

Both candidates appealed to a yearning in France for younger leadership and a more modern style after 12 lackluster years under Chirac, 74. Registration of new voters was up by 4.2 percent (1.8 million voters) in the last year alone, and French voters engaged in political debates in cafes and parks, and around dinner tables, with an enthusiasm not seen in decades.

The campaign electrified France. The candidates’ youthful vigor, calls for change, embrace of the Internet and more open, American-style stumping revitalized the country’s politics.

Sarkozy’s election may herald some fundamental shifts in France’s political and work culture if he can get his program through the legislature.

Sarkozy’s main campaign thrust was to loosen labor regulations and put France back to work — a fundamental shift in France’s Socialist culture of egalitarianism, in which state guarantees of short workweeks, long vacations and a comfortable lifestyle have been sacrosanct, while ambitious, American-style work ethics were dismissed as greedy and undesirable. At the same time, Sarkozy favors affirmative action programs to help put low-income people to work.

However, Sarkozy’s election also caused dismay among segments of French society, who are leary of his sometimes authoritarian or antagonistic tendencies.

…a second night of post-election violence left cars burned and store windows smashed. While the unrest has been small-scale, it sent a message to Nicolas Sarkozy: He may have won the presidency, but he hasn’t won over the many French who consider him – and his free-market reforms and tough line on crime and immigration – frighteningly brutal.

Sarkozy … is a divisive figure whose tough language and crackdowns on crime and immigration have angered many on the left – and in the immigrant-heavy suburban housing projects that erupted in riots in 2005. An anti-Sarkozy rally in Paris was planned for Tuesday afternoon.

The Chancellor of Germany is a woman.  So is the President of Chile.  Two prominent women are seeking to make history in the United States and France.  And Israel may be getting ready for its second female Prime Minister.  Now there is buzz that Argentina may also soon have a prominent female contender for the nation’s top office.  According to an article in the Boston Globe:

Argentina’s first couple, a power pair often compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, won’t say whether it will be a his or hers candidacy in this year’s presidential election.

President Néstor Kirchner boasts soaring approval ratings amid an economic recovery. His wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is also popular — and unlike Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she established her own political career long before her husband became president.

With both Kirchners doing well in the polls, they’ve been floating the idea that she should run to succeed him while he’s still in office.

Cristina Kirchner flew off without her husband this week to pick up some foreign policy credentials, going to Paris where she met privately Monday with another rising female politician: France’s socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal.

Who knows what the likelihood is that all of these nations will soon be led by women, but we certainly appear to be at an interesting historic treshold in much of the world, where gender is becoming less of an issue in national politics with each passing year.

There is an interesting battle brewing in next April’s race for president of France.  The Christian Science Monitor recently profiled the two main candidates, both of whom represent a departure from the traditional image of a French president (think Chirac, Mitterand, de Gaulle).  The candidate of the left is a woman, Segolene Royal (whom I previously wrote about), while the likely conservative candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, is the son of a Hungarian immigrant.

The Monitor has this to say about Ms. Royal:

Ms. Royal, who trounced two male opponents in the Socialist primary last Thursday to become the first woman to represent a major party in a national campaign, embodies just about every iconic virtue that French culture holds dear.

She is a mother - of four. She is a graduate of the École Nationale d’Administration, the exclusive academy that has forged France’s government elite for the past half-century. She is the daughter and granddaughter of career military men. She was raised in a strict Catholic home.

She is also ladylike, attractive, and - to top it all off - fond of dressing all in white.

“The image is of purity, almost religious, like Joan of Arc,” says Marc Abélès, a social anthropologist in Paris who has studied the rituals of French politics for years. “This is a formidable image to present to voters, especially to those in the center-right.”

The story contrasts her with Sarkozy, who is currently the country’s Interior Minister:

In terms of background, Sarkozy could not present a more different profile. His father was an immigrant from Hungary, his grandfather on his mother’s side was Jewish, and his marriage - his second - has undergone highly public turmoil over the past two years. He attended a prestigious university but didn’t graduate, rose through the party ranks as a contentious outsider, and has been accused by the French left and right of being pro-American.

According to the article, the two candidates are currently “running neck and neck” in opinion polls.

In France, that is.  It seems the French may be ready to not only elect a woman as their next president, but also to elect one who has been photographed in a bikini.  Margaret Thatcher, this is not.

Ségolène Royal has announced her candidacy for next year’s presidential election and she is currently the leading contender in national polling.  Her biggest challenge, in fact, may be in securing her party’s nomination and thereby overcoming the hierarchical, male-dominated nature of French political parties.  Time Magazine this week has a feature on Royal and her quest to become France’s first female president.

Royal defies easy categorization. She’s a devoted mother of four who never married their father and a political progressive who talks of family values, law and order, and the virtue of discipline. Although a card-carrying member of France’s political élite, she has cultivated a populist image by canvassing the opinions of ordinary citizens, whom she calls the “legitimate experts” on France’s problems.

In person, she listens with the prim attentiveness of a Catholic schoolgirl. Yet she has no false modesty over paparazzi adulation, shrugging at photos of her in a bikini that caused a stir this summer. As she says in an interview aboard a train between Poitiers and Paris, her two main political bases, “Why should one have to be sad, ugly and boring to go into politics these days?”

French voters seem ready to find out. Polls show Royal leading the field of prospective candidates for next year’s presidential election, which could make her the country’s first female head of state. … Royal still has to take on France’s hoary political establishment, which isn’t quite so ready to yield to her popularity. French political parties remain clannish, ideological nests dominated by their male leaders.

“All the polls show French society to be very open to the idea of a woman President,” says Françoise Gaspard, a feminist sociologist and former Socialist deputy. “But the political parties are still very archaic, controlled by men who can’t stand the idea. The fact that Ségolène is no longer acting as a ‘comrade’ but as a rival is completely astonishing for them–and completely insufferable.”

Under normal conditions, a military coup against a democratically elected government would seem to be bad for national morale, at the very least, and potentially devastating for tourism.  Apparently, though, that is not always true.  At least not in Thailand. 

This is how the Washington Post describes the scene in Bangkok a day after the Thai Army deposed the elected government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and established military control over the country.

Despite the new period of uncertainty, ushered in by a coup that was denounced by the United States and other foreign governments, many Thais in the capital appeared overjoyed.

“Democracy has won!” said an ecstatic Orathai Dechodomphan, 59, a tailor and Thaksin opponent who joined hundreds of people handing out roses to soldiers near the army headquarters. “Thaksin tried to steal power and did not respect our king. He never would have left on his own. What happened yesterday is our first step toward recovering a real democracy.”

The New York Times this morning points out the obvious irony of staging an undemocratic military coup in the name of restoring democracy.  In general, though, the country seems largely unaffected by the recent turn of events and even the tourist industry is only expected to be impacted for a brief period of time.

World Hum, meanwhile, has this to say about the coup’s relatively minor affect on tourists so far:

Apparently the banana pancakes-eating, hair-braiding backpacker set hanging out on Bangkok’s Kao San Road continues to, uh, chill, despite the tumultuous events of the last 24 hours in Thailand.

Politics is as much connected to culture as is business, so it was interesting to read this story about how the outgoing Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, singlehandedly altered the political culture of the nation.  In particular, he was notable for exuding charisma in an otherwise bland political climate, and for making decisions on his own in a culture that strongly values consensus.

“The conventional wisdom was that Japanese prime ministers were inherently incapable of exerting leadership,” said Takeshi Sasaki, a political scientist at Gakushuin University and a former president of the University of Tokyo. “But Koizumi exercised leadership with great tenacity and tried many new things — things that prime ministers had not said or done until now.”

Unlike his predecessors, Mr. Koizumi eschewed the compromises that had led to paralysis. In a society that values consensus, he was famous for making decisions on his own and seemed to excel in making political enemies. He was — in the words of his first foreign minister, Makiko Tanaka — a “weirdo.”

And the public loved him. Each time voters had a chance to choose between him and Japan’s old-fashioned politicians and bureaucrats, they backed him in large numbers.

In a related story, Japan’s governing party has now chosen a successor to Koizumi.  In September, Shinzo Abe will become the country’s new Prime Minister.

Events in Africa may not enter into the public consciousness very often in the U.S., but there is nevertheless a big experiment in democracy going on right now in one of Africa’s largest countries, Congo.

On Sunday, Congo announced the results of its first real election in more than four decades.  Since none of the 32 candidates garnered the necessary 50 percent of the vote in the presidential election, the two top finishers (Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba) will compete in a run-off election in October.  Unfortunately, supporters of each candidate have already engaged in gun battles and the European Union has sent in additional peacekeeping troops.

This election is important because a successful transition to democracy in such a large African nation would be an important step forward for that continent.  And because it may actually bring some peace to a war-torn nation.  It’s a difficult election, however, not only because of the nation’s lack of a democratic history but also because of east-west cultural divisions within Congo.  This BBC News article includes a chart that visually illustrates the country’s division.

As the Christian Science Monitor writes:

The election results confirmed a stark division between the east and west of this vast central African country. …

Kabila, the young former soldier who inherited the presidency from his father following his assassination in 2001, won a landslide victory in the east, where life proceeded normally after the vote. Congolese here in the east call Kabila “Le Pacificateur,” crediting him with bringing an end to years of brutal conflict in which an estimated 3.9 million people died.

In Kinshasa and elsewhere in the west, Kabila is unpopular. He speaks Swahili, the language of the east, and has only a loose grasp of Lingala, the main western language. Kabila’s opponents branded him a foreigner during the campaign period.  Here, he was trounced by Bemba, a former rebel leader and the son of a wealthy businessman who made his money during the 32-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Let’s hope that cooler heads prevail and the violence abates enough for a legitimate vote to be conducted.  A successful and peaceful election in Congo could help make some headway towards peace and democracy in an important region of Africa.  If you want information on the workings of the election, you can follow updates from the Carter Center, which is monitoring the vote.

Interesting story out of Mexico, in the run-up to that country’s upcoming presidential election.  Mexico’s Federal Election Institute has ruled that some of the candidates’ advertisements ”are too false to be on the air.”

The institute twice voted to cancel advertisements calling the leftist candidate — Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former Mexico City mayor — “a danger for Mexico,” saying they amounted to defamation. Last Sunday, it voted to ban ads from Mr. López Obrador’s camp branding Felipe Calderón … a liar.

The article in the New York Times notes:

In the United States, it would be as if a government committee had in 1988 told Vice President George Bush he could not run the Willie Horton ad against Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, or ruled that the Swift Boat campaign against Senator John Kerry in 2004 had to be taken off the air because it was defamatory.

Uh, can I digress here? Is this supposed to be a bad thing, that political candidates are prevented from defaming or lying about their opponents? Gee, can you imagine a political campaign where candidates were forced to debate the issues?

This story does, of course, also have a cultural component:

The debate (over the advertisements) underscores that Mexico’s transition from a one-party state six years ago to a modern, multiparty democracy has a peculiarly Mexican flavor, influenced by its history, experts here say. …

“We are not used to very strong and open public debate — this is a country that for 70-odd years was basically debating things internally without witnesses,” Ms. Fuentes-Berain said. “For some Mexicans it’s better to keep your manners and not be too blatant about what you think of a person.”

A battle between free speech and honesty, it seems.  The U.S. has a more direct communication style and prefers to err on the side of free speech, even if we don’t like what is being said.  Mexico, at least for the moment, seems to be taking the opposite approach.  This could perhaps be because the Mexicans traditionally have a more personal style of communicating in which other people’s feelings are taken into account.  It’s an interesting example of one way in which culture can affect politics.

Last month, I had a post about the rise of women to high political offices in various countries around the globe.  Now we can add Israel to that list, as Tzipi Livni just became deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the country’s newly inaugurated government.  She is the highest ranking female politican in Israel since Golda Meir in the 1970’s.

In March, Chile made Michelle Bachelet the first female president in South America who was democratically elected in her own right.  A few months before that, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia became the first woman to be elected president of an African nation.  Is France now ready to go down that same road?  Possibly, as evidenced by this NY Times profile of Ségolène Royal, who is flying high in some polls as a potential contender for France’s highest office in next year’s election.