Democracy? Who's that? by Fawzi Jurayev
Last November, Myanmar went to the polls for the third time since democratization, but it might well be the last. On 1 February, a military coup led by Myanmar’s commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing successfully seized control of the south-east Asian country, taking a step away from the promised democracy which the Myanmarese people had been hoping for after decades of military rule.
Myanmar isn’t alone. According to data published by The Economist Intelligence Unit, democracy is at its lowest point since records began in 2006. Whilst unclear how much of this can be explained by the Covid-19 pandemic, the data suggests that 2020 isn’t the first year that the Democracy Index has delivered the bad news: the global average has been on the decline since 2014.