# Posted 8:13 AM by Patrick Belton  

DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD THIS WEEK: Here's a quick round-up of democratization related stories that were in the headlines this week: (We also contributed brief posts on South African and Algerian elections over at Winds of Change, if you're interested...)

• Burmese democratic activists released: National League for Democracy chairman Aung Shwe and party secretary U Lwin were freed Tuesday by the country’s ruling junta after nearly a year under house arrest. With their release, Aung San Suu Kyi and her vice president Tin Oo remain as the last senior NLD officials in confinement. Yangon-based observers tell the press there is widespread expectation that Suu Kyi will be released shortly, most likely before the junta holds a convention on May 17 to court international support by touting its seven-point “road map to democracy,” which it claims will end with free and fair elections. Suu Kyi’s decision will then be whether to participate in - and lend legitimacy to - the junta’s multiparty conference, after having led the NLD to resounding victory in the country’s last election.

• In Iran, President Mohammad Khatami formally withdrew two key reform bills this week which had passed the country’s parliament last year, in a sign of the utter collapse of Iran’s reform movement within the country’s political system. At the same time, Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi - who was behind the closure of about one hundred pro-democratic publications in the run-up to elections - was publicly honoured as the "best manager" in the Iranian judiciary. The two withdrawn bills had each been vetoed last year by the Guardian Council; one would have increased presidential powers against the clerical Guardian and Expedience Councils, while the other would have barred the Guardian Council from disqualifying parliamentary and presidential candidates.

• In Nepal, thousands of people have taken to the streets in the last several weeks urging King Gyanendra to initiate democratic reforms. Gyanendra said last month that he hoped to hold elections by April next year, but left ample room to delay them past that date based on a lack of security. The country has been in the grip of a Maoist insurgency since 1996, with 9,300 people having died in fighting between Maoist and government forces. In 2002, Gyanendra dismissed the country’s prime minister for failing adequately to contain the insurgency, and used the occasion to postpone indefinitely elections which had been scheduled for November of that year. Over the past two weeks, more than one thousand people have been detained for taking part in demonstrations against the King, which are officially illegal.

• A Congress of Democrats from the Islamic World opened Tuesday amidst warnings from Turkey and Jordan that political reforms must not be imposed by outside powers. Separately, Egypt’s President Mubarak visited President Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch, where the U.S. president lavished praise on him for having hosted a conference of Arab civil society representatives who met at the Alexandria Library in March.

• South Korea voted for its National Assembly this week under the shadow of presidential impeachment. Polls favored President Roh Moo-hyun’s Uri party, which campaigned on a government reform platform, and benefitted from a backlash against the conservative Grand National Party after it drove impeachment through the legislature. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion