Showing 1 - 10 of 10
After 66 years, Cuba's regime faces reckoning
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/02/2026
» Fidel Castro and his communist band of brothers have had a good long run in power (66 years), but they have run out of road.
Trump-era elections in the Anglosphere
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2025
» The dictionary defines a "horse whisperer" as "someone who is skilled at training horses using gentle, non-violent methods based on understanding horse behaviour and psychology". By that standard, the only "Trump-whisperer" in Europe is Vladimir Putin (although Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Italy's Giorgia Meloni might get bit parts in the movie).
Argentina must break its vicious political cycle
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/11/2023
» Bertolt Brecht lived in Germany, not in Argentina, and he has been dead longer than he was alive, but his famous question applies to the Argentine election next Sunday: "Would it not be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another?"
Israel heads to yet another poll in just 3.5 years
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/10/2022
» Israeli voters are indefatigable. The election on Nov 1 will be the fifth in just three-and-a-half years, and yet the turnout is still likely to be around 70%. That's especially remarkable because all five elections have really been about the same question: should Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu go to jail, or should he be prime minister?
3 steps forward, but 2.5 back for populism
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/10/2022
» The reports about Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva's impending comeback as Brazilian president verged on the ecstatic in the week before the vote on Oct 2. He was after all, fourteen points ahead of his populist rival, incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, in the last opinion poll before the vote.
The 'pink tide' is rising in Latin America
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/06/2022
» 'Corruption isn't fought with slogans on TikTok," complained veteran Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro. But social media can win elections, and a right-wing dark horse called Rodolfo Hernández, who calls himself the "King of TikTok", may crush Mr Petro's hopes of becoming Colombia's first-ever leftist president next Sunday.
Killer 'Wave-7' heat getting far more common
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/07/2021
» First the "heat dome", with temperatures in the mid-to-high forties Celsius in many parts of western North America for up to a week (49.6°C in Lytton, British Columbia). Then, when the forests were tinder-dry, came the wildfires (which wiped Lytton out). From northern California to northern British Columbia, the records were being broken every day.
Mysterious allure of being French
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/10/2020
» On Sunday New Caledonia voted to remain French by a majority of 53.3% to 46.%. That's hardly an overwhelming majority, but it was the second referendum in two years to reject independence in the South Pacific archipelago, so we may take it as a done deal.
Pakistan's army a state above a state
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/07/2018
» 'Look, we have no other choice," Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said last May. "These games have gone on too long. Something has to change." Then he left to be with his wife Kulsoom, who is on life support while receiving treatment for cancer in England. But last week he and his daughter Maryam returned to Pakistan to begin serving the jail sentences imposed on them by a Pakistani court.
Is it the end of the road for the Ortegas in Nicaragua?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/06/2018
» From the Ceausescus (overthrown and shot in 1989) to the Mugabes (removed in a non-violent military coup in 2017), husband-and-wife teams running authoritarian regimes seem to have a particularly high casualty rate. And now it may be the turn of the Nicaraguan team: President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo.