His Alawite-dominated government initially lost considerable territory to rebel groups. When Syrians revolted in March 2011 it looked for a time that Bashar al-Assad would be swept from power. What begins with promise can end in tragedy. Brazil and South Korea are the ninth and eleventh economies in the world, and South Korea sits across a major geopolitical fault line.Ĩ. The jury is still out on whether and how fast Brazil and South Korea will respond to their political upheavals. She is now suspended from the presidency while South Korea’s Constitutional Court reviews the National Assembly’s decision. In December, the South Korean National Assembly acted on the people’s wishes. Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans hit the streets to demand Park’s impeachment. In South Korea, Park came under fire in Octoberwhen news broke that a long-time friend had used their friendship to influence government decisions and extort money from Korean companies. In August, the Brazilian Congress sent her packing. Instead, her opponents charged her with cooking the books in 2014 to hide Brazil’s growing fiscal deficits and ensure her reelection. Rousseff was not implicated in the Petrobras scandal itself. Instead, an underperforming economy and a massive scandal at Petrobras, the state oil company she once headed, helped drive her approval rating down to 13 percent. Rousseff thought that 2016 would be a year of political triumph as Brazil prepared to host the Olympics for the first time. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and South Korean President Park Geun-hye both missed that memo. Pro tip for democratically elected politicians: avoid scandals. Brazil and South Korea Impeach Their Presidents. Colombians now hope the deal works the conflict with the FARC has killed nearly a quarter million people.ĩ. With no need for the public to vote, the Colombian Congress approved the deal a week later. But the biggest change was dropping the requirement for a national referendum. Unveiled on November 24, 2016, it toughened some of the provisions on FARC members. Santos, who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the agreement, proceeded to hammer out a new deal. Polls predicted that the “yes” vote would carry easily. Santos’s predecessor, Álvaro Uribe, led critics who assailed the deal for its leniency toward the FARC. Years of peace talks finally culminated with the announcement on August 25, 2016: the two sides had agreed on six negotiating points and a national referendum would be held to approve the deal. He first won election back in 2010 while promising to continue Colombia’s fifty-year-old fight against the Marxist guerilla group FARC. Colombian President Juan Santos took this advice to heart. If at first you don’t succeed, find another way to get the job done. Several of these stories will continue into 2017.ġ0. You may want to read what follows closely. Or 1979.) But 2016 certainly had its share of significant world events. It’s not even the worst year in the last half century. Stories began appearing midway through 2016 asking whether it was the worst year ever.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |