At a Crossroads: Discussing the Important Trends Shaping the Decisions of Tomorrow

On April 21, 2021, Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was found guilty by a jury of all three charges in causing the death of George Floyd. The reaction to the verdict that emerged from this contentious trial was varied. Some celebrated the verdict, while others were more circumspect and thought that it was the sustained unrest, peaceful or otherwise, that got them to this point. Indeed, in the aftermath of the verdict, there were calls that such demonstrations continue in other cases of alleged misconduct against the black American community and that they should be sustained until certain structural reforms, like defunding the police, are enacted. There are, however, questions that arise as to whether the public outrage unduly affected the thinking of the jury in this case and whether the rule of law in America could be sustained in the face of this pressure. The central controversy of this whole trial was about whether an erosion of due process occurred and what this portends for the future. In other words, the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" has been the ideological foundation of the judicial system since its inception. Regardless of Chauvin's guilt or lack thereof, the public reaction to the trial threatens to undermine judicial independence and risks creating a society that defines its legal justice by the feelings and desires of the masses.

On the 31st of October 2020, the people of Ivory Coast went to the ballot box to elect their president. Following the death of Gon Coulibaly, a key favorite in the race, in July 2020, the election was thrown into uncertainty. The ruling party, Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), decided to replace Coulibaly with a familiar face in Ivorian politics, Alassane Dramane Ouattara. In the 2020 elections, Ouattara won a controversial third term, after receiving 94% of the total vote count, amid the opposition parties’ boycott. Ouattara insisted that the new constitution of 2016 allowed him to seek another term, after Ouattara changed the Ivorian constitution for the third time in Ivory Coast's history (allowing him to run again), while the opposition claimed that a third term is illegal, because it violates the Ivorian constitution, which forbids a candidate who has already served two terms. More than 40 people have been killed and thousands have fled the country since Ouattara announced he would run again, with police patrolling on every corner amid outbreaks of violent clashes, mostly in the south-west region of the country. This new upheaval is reminiscent of the crisis of the 2010 elections, which saw more than 3,000 people losing their lives and 1.3 million fleeing the country.

When Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was asked how the 2020 US Presidential election will impact Iranian policy towards the US, in his response, Khamenei insisted that “It does not matter to us who comes and goes.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is difficult to believe that the difference between the Biden and Trump administrations’ approaches in dealing with the problem of Iranian nuclear capability were merely semantics to Tehran. While it’s true that both Trump and Biden shared a similar philosophical goal, to improve on the JCPOA (aka the Iran deal) and get a “better deal”, the two leaders had very different paradigms on achieving this goal.

This week, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) published its programs of policies it will enact, if elected to power in the September elections in Germany. The CDU program is very vague in many areas. For example, it demands the implementation and expansion of pro-climate protection measures, but does not set any concrete goals for practical implementation of these measures. Its economic aspects are particularly ambiguous, perhaps to leave room for negotiations in future coalition talks, as well as to appeal to a broader voting demographic. However, in some key issues, its program is more concrete, as in its details of the importance it attaches to the special relationship and friendship with Israel, which the CDU sees as a key value for Germany's post-WW2 identity and foreign policy.