With barely more than a month under her belt as a professional politician, Yingluck Shinawatra stood poised Monday to become Thailand's first woman prime minister after her Pheu Thai party scored a resounding victory in Sunday's national elections. Riding a well-oiled political machine and benefiting from the popularity of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as prime minister in a 2006 military coup, Yingluck and her party won an apparent majority in parliament according to unofficial ...

Sonthi Boonyaratglin must have armor-plated gonads. How else to explain it? Five years ago, as an army general, he led a military coup that overthrew Thailand's then Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. Now retired and running in the country's July 3 parliamentary election, he presents the coup as a brave and selfless act. "I'm glad we did it," says Sonthi, who commands his Matubhum Party from a spartan Bangkok office. "If we hadn't, Thailand might no longer be a democracy." Sonthi's presence ...

Democrats are in a grumpy mood, and with good reason. A big special-election victory in upstate New York quickly sagged into a disastrous media frenzy over Democratic Congressman–Internet lothario Anthony Weiner's spectacular success in becoming the Twittersphere's most obvious twit. To make matters worse, a brand-new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows President Obama actually losing to Mitt Romney among registered voters, in a tight 49 contest. The race is close because next year both Obama and the Republican ...

"The momentous victory gives us very much courage," said Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. "I pray that God will give us help and shelter from adversity and that Malaysia will continue to flourish and prosper in peace. To hell with Sukarno." It was quite a post-election statement, but justified in the sense that the big issue at the polls had indeed been Sukarno and his vicious guerrilla and propaganda offensives against the new Federation of Malaysia. In a lively ...

The outcome of Malaysia's general election on Saturday was expected to be the usual landslide for the country's ruling political bloc. After all, for as long as the Southeast Asian nation has been independent, the National Front alliance has been in power. Even opposition leaders admitted they wouldn't win control of the federal government. Instead, most viewed the voting as a referendum on the leadership of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose popularity has been hurt by higher living costs and ...

From the epochal to the mundane, the decisions of Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew have steered the history of his island nation for more than half a century. But as the political party Lee founded in 1954 seeks to shore up its sliding fortunes with a younger and more politically outspoken electorate, the 87-year-old man regarded as modern Singapore's founding father has withdrawn from day-to-day governance by quitting his Cabinet post along with Senior Minister Goh ...

IT was a year of visitations and bold ventures with Russia and China, of a uniquely personal triumph at the polls for the President, of hopes raised and lately dashed for peace in Viet Nam. Foreign policy reigned preeminent, and was in good part the base for the landslide election victory at home. And U.S. foreign policy, for good or ill, was undeniably the handiwork of two people: Richard Milhous Nixon and Henry Alfred Kissinger, the President's Assistant for National ...

Banned in Berlin on election day this week was the flag of Germany: black, red & gold. When a Prussian Deputy tried to fly his country's flag. Berlin police made him take it down. The Deputy's country—the German Republic—was dying if not dead. Meanwhile out of the ballot box another Germany was being reborn. Its flag— black, white & red—the onetime Imperial Hohenzollern colors, flew in every street, floated majestically from Government buildings and was flaunted everywhere by shouting, ...

A troubling story that has not gotten much attention this election season — or any recent one, for that matter — is why a certain group of roughly 5.3 million Americans won't be allowed to vote. It isn't because they're underage or non-citizens or mentally incompetent. It isn't because they're unregistered or physically unable to get to the polls. It isn't even because they're limping around with a chronic case of political apathy. • Why Can't Felons Vote? Once they've served their time, ...

Two days after I won the democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School. "Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win," the doctor wrote. "I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you." The ...