New survey shows shift away from democratic culture COVER STORY | THE INDEPENDENT | Ugandans are growing increasingly more uninterested in elections and elected leaders and, they see little hope in the opposition providing better leadership than the current one of President Yoweri Museveni. That is the general view based on findings …
Read More »To protect democracy, protect exiled journalists
Rising authoritarianism, conflict, and threats to press freedom are driving journalists to flee their countries COMMENT | ANTONIO ZAPPULLA | “Foreign agent,” “undesirable,” “extremist.” For thousands of independent journalists trying to live and work in Russia, these words can be life-changing. In April, Ilya Barabanov, the BBC’s Russian correspondent, was …
Read More »Must democratising the media be bad for democracy?
Why the masters of the digital revolution’s attention game typically produce more noise than enlightenment COMMENT | CARSTEN BROSDA | Sometimes, the fulfillment of a promise feels like punishment. When the radio was invented more than 100 years ago, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht observed that its full potential could be …
Read More »REPORT: Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and DRC are electoral autocracies
Gothenburg, Sweden | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda is on a long list of autocratic countries in the world, according to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute’s eighth annual Democracy Report 2024. The report says the world is almost evenly divided between 91 democracies and 88 autocracies. Nevertheless, 71% of the …
Read More »“The rich who buy our elections don’t want democracy,” says U.S. journalist
BEIJING, CHINA | Xinhua | “The rich who buy our elections don’t want democracy,” U.S. journalist Lee Camp has said, describing the U.S. representative democracy as “false, rigged, fake, laughable.” Average Americans have no say in government policies and actions, he said in a video speech Wednesday at the third …
Read More »Double-dealing defines U.S. politics
BEIJING | Xinhua | Washington delights in touting such noble terms as democracy, human rights and rules-based international order, but what it does betrays what it truly believes. The Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, featuring violent protesters, damaged statues, vandalized offices and terrified lawmakers inside the “seat of American democracy,” …
Read More »Judgment days for democracy
COMMENT | NICHOLAS REED LANGEN | Day by day, week by week, courts are increasingly becoming the front line in the struggle to preserve democracy from populists and authoritarians. In the United States, the Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments on a decision by Colorado’s highest court that Donald Trump is …
Read More »Why ‘the Rest’ are rejecting the West
Biden will be remembered as another American president who preaches democracy while supporting repression COMMENT | FAWAZ A. GERGES | As the war in Gaza enters its fourth month, many in the Middle East and across the Global South have been struck both by the ferocity of Israel’s military campaign and …
Read More »To save democracy, fight inequality
Concentration of wealth among a few Big Tech billionaires translates into political and is anathema to democracy COMMENT | KAUSHIK BASU | In these tumultuous times, it often feels like one shock quickly eclipses another. Before one problem can be solved, another crisis emerges. Just a few weeks ago, the war …
Read More »Uganda registers decline in Democratic Index
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Security and Governance Program report has revealed that Uganda registered a decline in Democratic Index and failed to hit the required target which indicates a deterioration in its international ranking. This was revealed at the launch of the performance review in Kampala. The …
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