Yearbook 2008 Ecuador. At the end of September, a majority of the voting Ecuadorians voted yes to the country’s new constitution. The draft proposal had been drafted by a Constituent Assembly dominated by the ruling party Alianza País (AP) and considered tailor-made for President Rafael Correa to be re-elected at the next presidential election. The…
Author: payhelpcenter
East Timor 2008
Yearbook 2008 Timor. In a coup attempt in February, President Jos谷 Ramos-Horta was seriously wounded. In a firefight at his residence, the coup leader Alfredo Reinado, who led an armed uprising in 2006, was killed. President Ramos-Horta flew to Australia, where he slowly recovered. In April he was able to return to East Timor and…
Dominican Republic 2008
Yearbook 2008 Dominican Republic. The incumbent President Leonel Fernández won the first round of presidential elections on May 16 with 54 percent of the vote, which meant that a second round of voting was not needed, and Fernández could be sworn in for a second term on August 16. His opponent in the election, Miguel…
Dominica 2008
Yearbook 2008 Dominica. Dominica was granted a loan in February of the equivalent of just over US $ 3 million by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to alleviate the effects of the damage that occurred when a hurricane pulled over the island in August 2007. The total cost of the damage was estimated at about…
Djibouti 2008
Yearbook 2008 Djibouti. In the February 8 parliamentary elections, the government-friendly coalition won the Union Presidential Majority (UMP) all 65 seats. The country’s largest opposition group, the Union for a Democratic Alternative (UAD), boycotted the election and subsequently said it had not been democratic. According to the government, turnout was 73 percent. In April, neighboring…
Denmark 2008
Yearbook 2008 Denmark. The so-called Muhammadan crisis had violent consequences during the year, both in Denmark and abroad. In February, Danish police arrested several people suspected of planning murder of one of the cartoonists behind the Muhammad cartoons published in the Jutland Post in 2005. The details of the murder plans prompted a number of…
Democratic Republic of the Congo 2008
Yearbook 2008 Congo. Shortly after the turn of the year, a conference of about 600 participants was launched in the city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo with the aim of ending the country’s last armed conflict. Despite threatening statements during the conference, Militia leader Laurent Nkunda wrote after more than two…
Czech Republic 2008
Yearbook 2008 Czech Republic. Czech Conservative and EU skeptic President Václav Klaus was challenged in the February presidential election by Jan Švejnar, a Czech-American economist. The two candidates disagreed on several major political issues. Švejnar argued that the Czech Republic would move to the euro as soon as possible, while Klaus wanted to slow down…
Cyprus 2008
Yearbook 2008 Cyprus. The interrupted negotiations for a reunion of the island resumed in late summer. The reason was that Dimitris Christofias, leader of the Communist Workers Progress Party (AKEL), after a re-election campaign aimed at reunification won the presidential election in February. In the first round, February 17, no candidate got more than 50…
Cuba 2008
Yearbook 2008 Cuba. Raúl Castro became officially permanent president on February 24 when the National Assembly gathered to elect members of the Cabinet. The other members also represented the old guard, or los históricos de la revolución as they are called in Cuba, such as 77-year-old José Ramón Machado Ventura, a veteran who fought with…