Less than six months have passed since the results of the presidential elections in Indonesia were announced. Meanwhile, Anglo-Saxon countries are already putting pressure on the new president. Can the largest Southeast Asian country withstand the pressure from the United States and avoid becoming a Western pawn?

As the deadline for registering candidates for the upcoming presidential elections approaches, there is a noticeable surge in political activity in Iran. Numerous candidates from different walks of life are rushing to submit their applications, preparing for what the Iranian media thinks will be a ‘transformative election’…

The lengthiest elections in India – and the world as a whole – lasting 44 days, to elect 543 deputies of the highest legislative body, the House of the People, have ended. The marathon voting took place in seven stages from April 19 to June 1, 2024, in which almost a billion voters took part. Thus, these were the largest elections in the world, and it should be noted that they were held at a high organisational and technical level.  These elections are important because the winning party or coalition…

The inauguration of the new president on 20 May in Taiwan was accompanied by increased political turbulence on the island itself, had a notable international resonance and caused an expectedly negative reaction in the PRC.

The clerical regime in Iran continues to consolidate power in its hands. In the face of intense external pressure and the complex situation in the Middle East, the country is preparing for early presidential elections, preparing the landscape for a future president and supreme leader…

In the area of foreign policy, the most serious step the new head of state plans to take is to reassess relations with the former metropolis. According to the South African Mail and Guardian, both the President and the Prime Minister are unanimous in agreeing that the partnership with France needs to be significantly adjusted to take Senegal’s interests more fully into account…

According to a number of analysts, the rise to power in Senegal of Diomaye Faye and Ousmane Sonko, who enjoy the support of the majority of the population, especially the youth, who feel strongly the “winds of pan-Africanism and nationalism”, should also be seen as “the result of the wave of sovereignty sweeping West Africa”. At his first press conference after his election, Faye said that “the people of Senegal, by voting for him, were in favour of breaking with the past in order to implement the social project proposed by our party”, which includes fighting corruption, promoting youth employment and raising the cost of living…

South Korea’s parliamentary elections have resulted in the presidential-parliamentary confrontation remaining alive until the end of Yoon Suk-yeol’s presidency. The Conservatives failed to deprive the Democrats of the majority in the parliament while the Democrats did not manage to increase this majority to 2/3 in order to impeach the president. Nevertheless, the situation is generally perceived as a defeat for the Conservatives, because until the end of his term, President Yoon will have to deal with the parliament existing in the logic of factional struggle…

In Senegal’s presidential elections held on 24 March this year, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, won a convincing victory for the opposition forces with 54 per cent of the vote. Former Prime Minister Amadou Ba of the ruling Alliance for the Republic coalition of outgoing President Macky Sall came in second with 35 per cent of his supporters. These elections were preceded by a period of intense internal political struggle between Macky Sall’s ruling “democratic regime” and the opposition, linked to the March 2021 arrest of Ousmane Sonko, leader of the African Patriots of Senegal for Work…

Some Western European media outlets report that assessments of Washington’s foreign policy are becoming more and more negative in the Global South. And here they see, first and foremost, the hand of Moscow. Meanwhile, US actions on the war in Gaza are condemned by virtually the entire international community. For example, Indonesia said that US vetoes in the Security Council favoring Israel “betrayed the shared aspiration to build lasting peace in the Middle East.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stressed that in fact the US is committing aggression against the Palestinian people…

On April 10, South Korea held elections for members of the 22nd National Assembly, with the leading opposition Democratic Party retaining its majority in parliament. The media described the election outcome as a confident and crushing victory for the opposition, but when compared to the 2020 election, where the score was 180:103 in favor of the Conservatives, the Democrats rather maintained their position, and even lost a little without Cho Kuk. Rather, the Conservatives failed to deprive the Democrats of a qualified majority of half of the mandates, and the Democrats did not gain two-thirds, after which they could have impeached the president. As they say, ‘they held their ground.’

Although in its domestic political development Turkey has not yet reached the standards of European democracy, it has made significant progress in terms of the political competition between the leading parties, respect for voters’ civil rights and the transparency of elections. The municipal elections held on March 31, 2024, which resulted in a landslide victory, albeit with a narrow margin, for candidates from the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), can be cited as a good example of how far Turkish democracy has developed…