
Daniel Griswold
A decade-long trend toward an increasingly conservative makeup of all of Iran’s most powerful political institutions was disrupted at the presidential election held in June 2013. Hassan Rowhani, the lone moderate among the six candidates vying to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, emerged the victor, winning slightly more than 50 percent of the first-round vote.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s minority coalition government is under pressure to restore public and investor confidence, as concerns surrounding the slowing pace of growth have more recently been compounded by the rupee’s alarming depreciation. A general election is required no later than the second quarter of 2014, and the latest opinion polls signal an abrupt shift in popular attitudes away from the governing UPA, a bloc headed by Singh’s Indian National Congress.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ideologically eclectic coalition government passed the first major test of its viability in early August, when the Knesset approved an austerity budget for 2013–2014 that includes a range of spending cuts and tax increases. The passage of a two-year spending plan has greatly increased the coalition’s chance of surviving until 2015, assuming there is no need to revise the freshly minted budget.
Allegations of exorbitant claims for reimbursement of living expenses submitted by some senators from the governing CPC became a major problem for Prime Minister Stephen Harper after it was revealed that his chief of staff, Nigel Wright, had cut a check for $90,000 to one senator. Wright resigned, but Harper’s claim that he had no knowledge of the transaction failed to convince voters.
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