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Only two countries in Latin America—Costa Rica and Uruguay—can be considered “full democracies,”

In Latin America, support and esteem for democracy have fallen to a historic low. The trend is most pronounced in Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff was removed from office last week.

However, the same studies reveal an increase in informal youth movements promoting democratic changes in many countries, interconnected and mobilized in non-traditional ways, especially via social networks

Keeping the status quo on campaign financing is “the death of democracy.”

He is calling for a ban on private funding for political campaigns.

Samuel said there should be stringent laws that severely punish politicians through penalties and fines for using private funding for political campaign.

Both globally and in the Latin American region we are witnessing a sea change, accompanied by opportunities but also by new challenges and threats for the quality of democracy.

where President Daniel Ortega, seeking a third consecutive five-year term in November, has just announced that his wife, Rosario Murillo, is his vice-presidential running mate.

Mr. Ortega first ruled Nicaragua for 11 years after the 1979 revolution, until his ouster in the country’s first genuinely democratic election

Having regained the presidency in 2006 through a series of corrupt political maneuvers, Mr. Ortega promptly engaged in more chicanery to ensure he would never have to leave office again

Thousands of middle-class Brazilians drowned her out by banging pots and pans, a traditional way to show dissent in neighbouring countries.

A former government minister in St Kitts and Nevis says the huge sums of money in politics is undermining democracy in Antigua and Barbuda and other small island states.

Grant says union and political activities should not mix

Grant made the remark to OBSERVER media, yesterday, two days after Deputy General Secretary of the Antigua & Barbuda Workers’ Union (ABWU) Chester Hughes issued a strong warning to Prime Minister Gaston Browne, at a United Progressive Party (UPP) public rally, that the ABWU would mount strong opposition to any increase in taxes.

“I want to tell the prime minister that my statement to the media is not a threat; it’s a promise. If you and your government go forward and add any more taxes on the working class people of this country, there will be industrial unrest in this country,” Hughes declared.

With the exception of Fidel Castro's Cuba, the Western Hemisphere is now exclusively ruled by democratically elected leaders.

Government’s Website Is Again Up And Running After A Cyber Attack

The Minister has confirmed that the hackers originated outside of Antigua and Barbuda but was careful not to release too much details saying the issue is still under investigation.

Despite the decay of democratic institutions in Latin America, democracy is on the rise in the region because citizens are demanding better government.

Challenges are big for the Western Hemisphere, but the principal idea behind solving those challenges is that governments should act responsibly to resolve them

A prime example of this insecurity can be found in México, especially in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, where nearly 5,000 persons have been killed in a bloody drug war that has been raging for three years.

in spite of the eventual margin of victory, the result was always in doubt because of persistent allegations of widespread vote buying and other electoral manipulation by the now former government.

Whatever the truth or otherwise to the several allegations of attempted election fraud,

it was reported locally that the questionable activities more or less ceased as soon as the observers arrived in the country just a few days before the election itself

Antiguan ex-president of UN general assembly faces $1m corruption charges

A former president of the United Nations general assembly turned the world body into a “platform for profit” by accepting over $1m in bribes and a trip to New Orleans from a billionaire Chinese real estate mogul and other businesspeople to pave the way for lucrative investments, a prosecutor charged on Tuesday

John Ashe, a former UN ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda who served in the largely ceremonial post from September 2013 to September 2014, faces conspiracy- and bribery-related charges along with five others, including Francis Lorenzo, a deputy UN ambassador from the Dominican Republic who lives in the Bronx.

On Jan. 10, 1978, my father was assassinated by hit men of the Somoza regime. His death meant the end of whatever remained of Nicaragua’s political arena. But it also unleashed an enormous wave of protests nationwide, because the country now saw rebellion as the only way left to end the dictatorship.Four decades later, we have gone through a tortuous cycle of revolution and counterrevolution, civil war and foreign aggression, democratic transition and, now, a return to authoritarianism. History is repeating itself as farce under the regime of Daniel Ortega, the former guerrilla leader who was the elected president from 1985 to 1990 and who returned to power in 2007.

Ironically, when the Sandinista revolution’s leaders were voted out of power in 1990 (allowing my mother, Violeta Chamorro, to become Nicaragua’s president for seven years), it was Mr. Ortega himself who contributed to the establishment of an electoral democracy by conceding defeat, thereby setting the country on course to transfer power peacefully among political parties. However, Mr. Ortega and the next president, Arnoldo Alemán, who later was accused of corruption, arrived at a political compact in 1999 that weakened the trend toward pluralistic democracy by setting up bipartisan control of the electoral system. In 2007, that, too, collapsed when Mr. Ortega, now back in office, took sole control.

In 2008, well-documented fraud marred municipal elections. And in 2011, Mr. Ortega, defying term limits law, was “re-elected” in balloting that was denounced as unconstitutional. He has used the time since to consolidate an institutional dictatorship that concentrates absolute power and that derives political support from an alliance with private business interests and from citizens who benefit from government policies that aid the poor.

former USTR and deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick wrote an essay proposing that the United States consolidate our trade diplomacy in the region: This year President Bush and the Democratic-led Congress should launch a new Association of American Free Trade Agreements (AAFTA). The AAFTA could shape the future of the Western Hemisphere, while offering a new foreign and economic policy design that combines trade, open societies, development and democracy.

U.S. global strategy must have a hemispheric foundation. Successful and sustainable international strategies must be constructed across administrations. Ronald Reagan called for free trade throughout the Americas, opened U.S. markets to our Caribbean neighbors, and completed an FTA with Canada. George H.W. Bush completed negotiations for a North American FTA, offered trade preferences to the Andean countries, negotiated peace in Central America, and freed Panama. Bill Clinton secured the passage of Nafta, launched work on a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and backed Plan Colombia. George W. Bush enacted FTAs with Chile, the five states of Central America and the Dominican Republic. He also completed FTAs with Colombia, Peru and Panama. If Congress passes these agreements, the U.S. will finally have an unbroken line of free trade partners stretching from Alaska to the tip of South America. Not counting the U.S., this free trade assembly would comprise two-thirds of both the population and GDP of the Americas. The AAFTA would draw together these 13 partners to build on the gains of free trade. It could also include the island states of the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act. Starting with a small secretariat, perhaps in Miami, the AAFTA should advance hemispheric economic integration; link development and democracy with trade and aid; improve working and environmental conditions; and continue to pursue the goal of free trade throughout the hemisphere. It might even foster cooperation in the WTO's global trade negotiations. The AAFTA might be connected to an academic center, which could combine research and practice through an association among universities in the Americas.... The U.S. cannot afford to lose interest in its own neighborhood.

in many ways, Zoellick is simply proposing a political trade with our FTA partners -- deeper economic integration in return for adding on stringent labor and environmental standards.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda took steps in 2012 to reform the country’s financial regulatory environment in the aftermath of the discovery of a $7 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, which had exposed deep ties between foreign businesses and the government

Antigua and Barbuda, a member of the Commonwealth, gained its independence from Britain in 1981.

In the 2004 elections, the opposition United Progressive Party (UPP), led by Baldwin Spencer, defeated Prime Minister Lester Bird and the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP), ending the Bird political dynasty that had governed the country since 1976.

DURING the multitudinous demonstration against Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, in São Paulo on March 15th, a lunatic fringe chanted for a return to military rule. That was sad more than worrying. The rightists were shouted down. Their isolation served to underline how routine democracy has become in many Latin American countries in the third of a century or so since the generals returned to barracks.

o what do you do if you are the president of the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and you’re facing the worst drought since 1976? Why, you buy Russian fighter jets at $30 million a pop, and work out a secretive deal to trade private land and the patrimony of your citizens to a Chinese canal-building company, of course.

When I worked for the Bush administration, I met the newly-elected Ortega in Granada, Nicaragua, at an event he surely had mixed feelings about. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had helped the government of Nicaragua design and implement a land reform program that put property titles into the hands of Nicaraguan citizens. Nicaraguans loved it,

Ortega is now serving his second term.

After a half century of war, and after four years of grinding negotiations, the Colombian government and leaders of the country's insurgency reached an accord in August to end a conflict in which more than 220,000 people were killed and six million displaced

Polls had the yes vote comfortably ahead by a 2-to-1 ratio.