Top 5 Lunatic Dictators
December 9, 2009 LifeStyle, famouse
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (born 28 July 1954) is the President of Venezuela. As the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Chávez promotes a political doctrine of participatory democracy, socialism and Latin American and Caribbean cooperation. He is also a critic of neoliberalism, globalization, and United States foreign policy.
A career military officer, Chávez founded the left-wing Fifth Republic Movement after orchestrating a failed 1992 coup d’état against former President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Chávez was elected President in 1998 with a campaign centering on promises of aiding Venezuela’s poor majority, and was reelected in 2000 and in 2006. Domestically, Chávez has maintained nationwide Bolivarian Missions, whose goals are to combat disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other social ills. Abroad, Chávez has acted against the Washington Consensus by supporting alternative models of economic development, and has advocated cooperation among the world’s poor nations, especially those in Latin America.
Chávez’s policies have evoked controversy in Venezuela and abroad, receiving everything from vehement criticism to enthusiastic support. During the presidency of George W. Bush the government of the United States stated at various points that Chávez was a threat todemocracy in Latin America. Many other governments sympathize with his ideology or welcome his bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements. In 2005 and 2006 he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born 28 October 1956) is the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country. An engineer and teacher from a poor background, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity after the Islamic Revolution. Appointed a provincial governor, he was removed after the election of PresidentMohammad Khatami and returned to teaching. Tehran’s council appointed him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard-line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became President on 3 August 2005.
Ahmadinejad is a controversial figure both within Iran and internationally. He has been criticized domestically for his economic lapses and disregard for human rights. He launched a gas rationing plan in 2007 to reduce the country’s fuel consumption, and cut the interest rates private and public banking facilities could charge. He supports Iran’s nuclear energy program. His election to a second term in 2009was widely disputed and caused widespread protests domestically and drew significant international criticism. Major opposition parties, traditional clerical circles and influential Iranian politicians questioned the legitimacy of his presidency.
Ahmadinejad is an outspoken critic of the United States, Israel, and United Kingdom. He abides by Iran’s long-standing policy of refusing to recognize Israel as a legitimate nation or as representative of the region’s population. He advocates “free elections” for the region, and believes Palestinians need a stronger voice in the region’s future. He has been characterized in much of the West by a particular comment he made in 2005 which was initially translated as calling for the “occupying regime” (taken to mean Israel) to be “wiped off the map.” However, other sources have suggested that a more accurate translation would be “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish (or ‘be eliminated’ ) from the page of time”. He has also been accused of describing the Holocaust as a myth and of making statements influenced by classic anti-Semitic ideas, which has led to accusations of anti-Semitism, though he has rejected accusations of anti-Semitism andHolocaust denial, saying that he “respects Jews very much” and that he was not “passing judgment” on the Holocaust, consistently refocusing the debate onto the plight of the Palestinians which Ahmadinejad insists is the immediate global issue.
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Karigamombe Mugabe (born 21 February 1924) is the current President of Zimbabwe. He has held power as the head of government since 1980, as Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987, and as the first executive head of state since 1987. In 2008, his party suffered a defeat in national elections, but Mugabe retained power after running unopposed in a subsequent run-off election.
Mugabe rose to prominence in the 1960s as the Secretary General of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). For many years in the 1960s and 1970s Mugabe was a political prisoner in Rhodesia. His goal was to replace white minority-rule with a one-party Marxist regime. Having been a political prisoner for 10 years, immediately on release with Edgar Tekere, Mugabe left Rhodesia in 1974 to join the Zimbabwe Liberation Struggle (Rhodesian Bush War) from bases in Mozambique. At the end of the war in 1979, Mugabe emerged as a hero in the minds of many Africans. He won the general elections of 1980, the second in which the majority of Black Africans participated in large numbers (though the electoral system in Rhodesia had allowed Black participation based on qualified franchise), amid reports of violent intimidation by the militants he now controlled. Mugabe then became the first Prime Minister after calling for reconciliation between formerly warring parties, including the white people as well as rival parties.
The years following Zimbabwe’s independence saw a split between the two key belligerents who had fought alongside each other during the 1970s against the government of Rhodesia. An armed conflict between Mugabe’s Maoist-oriented Government and dissident followers of Joshua Nkomo’s pro-Marxist ZAPU erupted. Following the deaths of thousands, neither warring faction able to defeat the other, the heads of the opposing movements reached a landmark agreement, whence was created a new ruling party, ZANU PF, as a merger between the two former rivals.
Since 1998 Mugabe’s policies have elicited domestic and international condemnation. Mugabe’s government supported the Southern African Development Community’s intervention in the Second Congo War; expropriated thousands of white-owned farms; printed hundreds of trillions of Zimbabwean dollars, causing hyperinflation; and harassed and intimidated such political opponents as the Movement for Democratic Change. The resulting downward spiral in Zimbabwe’s economy has been accompanied by oil and food shortages, massive internal displacement and emigration. During this period Mugabe’s policies have been denounced in the West and at home as racist against Zimbabwe’s white minority. In July 2008, referring to the Mugabe regime, the Group of Eight released a collective statement saying that they “do not accept the legitimacy of a government that does not reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people”.
On September 15, 2008, a power-sharing agreement brokered by then-South African President Thabo Mbeki was signed. Under the deal, Mugabe remained President, Morgan Tsvangirai became Prime Minister, the MDC controls the Republic Police, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front commands the Army, and Arthur Mutambara became Deputy Prime Minister.
Mugabe has described his critics as “born again colonialists”, and both he and his supporters claim Zimbabwe’s problems are the legacy of imperialism, aggravated by Western economic meddling.
Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il (also written as Kim Jong Il, born 16 February 1941; official biographies state 16 February 1942) is the Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (also known as North Korea). He is the Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, and General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (the ruling party since 1948). He succeeded his father Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea, who died in 1994, and commands the fourth largest standing army in the world. North Korea officially refers to him as the “Dear Leader” and the “Great Leader”.
Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow (19 February 1940 – 21 December 2006) was a Turkmen politician who served as President (later President for Life) of Turkmenistan from 2 November 1990 until his death in 2006. He was First Secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party from 1985 until 1991 and continued to lead Turkmenistan for 15 years after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. He was known in English as Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov, the romanization of theRussian spelling Сапармурат Атаевич Ниязов of his Turkmen name.
Turkmen media referred to him using the title “His Excellency Saparmurat Türkmenbaşy, President of Turkmenistan and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers”. His self-given title Türkmenbaşy, or Turkmenbashi meaning Leader of Turkmens, referred to his position as the founder and president of the Association of Turkmens of the World.
Foreign media criticized him as one of the world’s most totalitarian and repressive dictators, highlighting his reputation of imposing his personaleccentricities upon the country, which extended to renaming months after members of his family, and recoining the Turkmen word for bread by the name of his mother. Global Witness, a London-based human rights organization, reported that money under Niyazov’s control and held overseas may be in excess of US$3 billion, of which $2 billion is supposedly situated in the Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund at Deutsche Bank in Germany.
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