Best Of The Week's Blogs

A new feature now on Democracy Rising, partially lending to the old Carnival of Revolutions (whatever happened to that?!). Here are my top 5 blog entries for the week beginning 27th March 2006:

• Matthew Shugart, at Fruits and Votes, offers a full round up and analysis of allocated seats in the Ukrainian parliamentary election. As he shows the Orange coalition should take about 54% or 243 seats. That's if Yushchenko wants to work with the old team...

• Andrei Khrapavitski asks 'Whats up with Lukashenka?'. For those who are unaware, the Belarusian President has been missing from television screens since his defiant press conference on the Monday after the ballot. Furthermore suspicions are being raised by the cancellation of Luka's inauguration. So just where he is? Has he turned to drink, is he afraid the opposition might spoil his big day? A heart attack? In the same week Castro supposedly died, my logic tells me to dismiss this as pure speculation. Read on though...

• The ever excellent Ethiopundit takes a closer look at the lies of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his pie-in-the-sky economic growth claims. Brilliant.

• Uzbek President Islam Karimov made a state visit to South Korea this week. Registan explains why so many of the official photos show a peeved looking Karimov. If the Uzbek government hoped to gain support from this trip - quite the opposite seems to have occurred.

• Not so much a post, but a Blog to keep your eye on. Singapore - probably one of the worlds most cleverly run police-states - is expected to hold a general election in the coming months. With the rise of the 'Democratic movement' can the opposition make some inroads into the PAP's 47-year long rule?

Happy reading!

Matt Jay