The gradual implosion of democratic institutions in Suriname and the making of a mafia state

Introduction The harvest of one day surfing through the content of online Surinamese news sites, paints a ghastly picture of corruption, lies, fleecing, misguidedness and misrepresentation of facts. These reports indicate that democracy is seriously compromised. By gluing bit and bite size pieces of news and information together, creates a bigger but most disturbing picture [...]

The State of the Disunion – Inconsistency Backfires on European Union’s Foreign Policy

The revolutionary uprisings in North Africa have been a true earthquake for Europe’s foreign policy standing in the region. The way how the EU reacted on this critical challenge tells a lot about the state of disunion in regard to its foreign policy. Both individual EU Member States and the EU itself were slow to [...]

The Jasmine Revolution II: Will the revolution be tweeted?

One of the most talked about features of the recent wave of pro-democracy demonstrations and uprisings occurring across the Arab world, has been the role played by information communication technology and social networking software. Of the latter much has been made of the fact that protests were ‘advertised’ as forthcoming events on Facebook while Twitter [...]

Can the Jasmine Revolution spread to Southeast Asia?

Over the past month the international community has witnessed unprecedented political opposition and revolutions in the Middle East. Already this so called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ or ‘Arab Spring’ has overturned two of the countries long-standing political regimes, the Ben-Ali regime in Tunisia and more surprisingly the 30 year rule of strongman Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In [...]