Point One

Iran, a Shiite theocracy on the Arabian Peninsula, suffered a mortal blow early last week when an helicopter in which President Ebrahim Raisi was travelling crashed, pulling him down to a fiery death along with some other top Iranian officials.  Raisi was on Sunday, 19th May, returning from a ceremony at which he and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev inaugurated a dam at the border region of Iran and Azerbaijan when the American-made Bell 212 helicopter conveying the Iranian president slammed into a mountain peak amidst thick fog, killing him and all others on board including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The charred wreckage of the helicopter carrying eight passengers and crew was found early on Monday after an overnight search in blizzard conditions. Besides Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian, others who died in the crash were the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, a senior cleric from the Iranian city of Tabriz, an official of Iran’s elite Guardian Council and thr...

President Faure Gnassingbé of Togo early this month signed into law a new constitution for his country that is suspected aimed at indefinitely prolonging his stay in power. The new law essentially swaps the tiny West African nation’s presidential system with parliamentary system, adjusts the presidential tenure, and creates a new position of head of government that could offer the 57-year-old, who has been in power for two decades already, a platform for a lifetime of rulership.  Under the new framework, Togolese voters will no longer directly choose the country’s president, as parliament will now have that power. Besides, the constitution raises the presidential term from five to six years and introduces a single-term limit. The nearly 20 years Gnassingbé has been in office would not count and he is eligible to take office under the new law when his current tenure expires in 2025. The constitution also creates a new office of de facto head of government known as ‘president of the ...