How often has it been publicized that a government leader takes their powers to the next level? More than likely every leader that even ran a country at some point has used their powers to do some harm towards their country. In this text, I am not going to talk about one country in particular, given there’s more than one leader in the world tarnishing the good/ or continuing to ruin their country’s name. For starter, this article we read early in the semester of this class, “How did Zambia’s long-stable democracy ended up in a political crisis in 2017”. Next, another article from class, “Unprecedented Democratic Backsliding in Hungary: Is it too late to turn around?” . Lastly, I’m going to talk about the current between what people believed about President Trump, to what actually happened, also about what Biden has done since he’s been in office. All of these have been an explicit form of Democratic Erosion in their own way, but it all leads back to how the leaders were or were not serving their people, but mainly serving themselves.  

When it comes to a Third World country, you would want a person in charge to be strong in order to for it to become a developed country, but not in Zambia. This country has been hurting due to the actions of President Edgar Lungu. He has been recently given more power since he’s, “Invoking Article 31 of the constitution- Declaration relating to Threatened Emergency- rather than article 30 Declaration of Public Emergency- the President requested extra power to prevent a state of emergency rather than actually declaring one.” With this power he has not done the correct thing, since there is a reason that could be preventing that. For starters it could be because the government has been accused of all the terrible actions that has been going on in Zambia like fire’s and more. The Opposition leaders have been the ones that are trying to get the people to listen so the people would stop believing the lies government has been saying about these terrible actions have all been through natural doings. Another that ties with the Opposition group is Hakainde Hichilema, known as HH in Zambia. He is a well known Opposition leader that has been trying to stop Lungu from his exhausting actions, because HH realizes that this country is not heading into the safe direction needed. Without Hichilema’s help Lungu will continue to be the cause of why this country is failing. Secondly It’s been stated that he is not in the best form of health. This could have a major impact on how a person leads a country, but to him he’s found a way to change the narrative. “In addition to rumors that he is in bad health, this makes him more potentially vulnerable to internal opposition than to the challenge of main opposition party. On the Interpretation, Lungu’s appropriation of extra powers is designed as a warning to his rivals within the party to back off.” If this was his excuse, then this would be considered by far of the best moves a leader could make to invoke article 31. Lastly, this move of using this Declaring a State of Emergency, could have been to have a better chance in securing a spot in the next term(2021), so that he would already have a strong and firm grip of the people and another chance to convince the people what he’s doing is right. Unfortunately, in the current year of 2023, Opposition leader HH is now the President. The first thing that HH promised his people was to make sure he repaired the economic debt previous leaders has made and also, he strived to improve human rights. “Zambia’s public debt was just under 24 percent of its gross domestic product in 2014, but it exploded to 141 percent as of 2022, according to the World Bank. Zambia last year become the first African state amid the COVID-19 crisis to default on its public debt, which analysts have measured in recent years at between $12 billion and $18 billion.” https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/09/zambias-new-leadership-and-stakes-africa . HH has been doing it best to meet with leader across the world to ask for help in re-creating everything that Lungu has destroyed. HH has meet with leaders like President Biden and Dana banks.  

Next is on how the leaders of Hungary has turned astray to what the norm was and now started to lean on the authoritarian side. In Hungary there has been a lot of chatter to about how the Prime Minister Viktor Orban actions has been changing the country. There are three reasons as to why the media think that he is shifting the democracy into an authoritarian mindset. Let’s just talk about how he’s the leader of Fidezs, which is a right-wing populist and national conservative party. In which this group has a very strong political presences in what happens in Hungary. They are like the Republicans of Hungary. So, with Orban in control of this group, which has presented an authoritarian style governance, when trying to stop them it doesn’t go well. They have complete control over a lot of important things like the media. “In fact, Orban’s party has been tightening is claims to power through biased media ownership in which he enjoyed 10x as many advertising billboards compared to oppositions parties. Marki-zay, a 49-year-old economist, mentioned with distaste that he was only given five minutes if airtime on public Tv to state his case.” This is such an act of human right violation, but it is a way that Fidezs could counter his statement, in which he was given time to speak his mind, he just did not do it in a timely manner. Next on how he has been trying to run for government is that he has been working to stop the EU from messing with their national affairs. ‘ Fidezs’s persistent and identity- driven rhetoric has over the years appealed to a nationalistic worldview in which a great Hungary beyond its current borders is deeply manifested in voters’ minds. Within this rhetoric, the Eu has been framed as an external threat, aiming to interfere in Hungary’s national affairs. Alongside powerful anti-immigration rhetoric’s, Orban is showing reluctance to implement sanctions packages. In Orban’s predictions, sanction packages will become too costly overtime, accumulating a growing resistance that will advocate for coexistence in Russia in which he plans to be the first in line.” This could become a major problem for the people of Hungary. If they were to ever become an authoritarian state under the direction of Russia, that would cause so much people for the people, but allegedly help them economy wise. Lastly, Orban is turning trying to turn his country back into the man-rule country it was in the beginning without having any women in government. “Further, Orban has gradually manipulated the electorate as well as the executive government to shift towards an entirely male polity.” Woman have been gradually showing that they are able to run the government efficiently just as men been able to, but Fidezs hasn’t been much or a fan, so they are rigging the elections so that women could stay where they assume they should be.  

Finally, I want to talk about the Trump and Biden Terms. So, for starters the Trump term started in 2016 after he won the election behind Obama. During Trump’s campaign he was nearly supported by the entire American due to his Republican party help and his love for the republican people. He had many right winged people across the world wanting him to become president due to the fact they believe that trump was going to promote the white man’s nation. There were white people starting to dehumanize minority group just because they had a republican running for office that could understand where set the Ideal of America was once before. I mean can you blame either side for the way they felt Trump’s slogan was to “Make America Great Again”. This Slogan was posted everywhere more than anybody had every knew. To be honest this was a form of democratic erosion due to his presence in what Trump stood for it allowed a specific group bully other due to their soon to be president. Soon to realize that was all there to it for the white race to feel they were superiors. Behind all the republican style speeches trump, he actually helped the economy for the American people. There were a lot more jobs created, which decreased the unemployment rate. By the time trump entered office, he had inherited one of the strongest job markets in American history from Obama. But COVID-19 swifty put that to an end. The Unemployment rate shot to 14.7 , up to 10 percentage points from when Trump took office.” https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/10/business/us-economy-trump-vs-other-presidents/ Also, during 2019 when COVID came around Trump were the one to sign off on the “Stimulus Check” to provide a source of income to the people when they couldn’t work. When I came to the Biden term it was more a trying to fix everything Trump broken, but there wasn’t anything broken at the time. Biden raised taxes on everyone, he also spent majority of the American Funds on funding other wars and interventions going on around the world when right here in America we needed that money. So, by him acting in that way inflation has increased on the American people and each day there has been more money spent trying to survive.   

All four of these leaders have something in common, they all had a specific goal in mind that they were going to do things the way they saw fit. During each of these leaders’ time they had an ideal nation they felt would help, but no matter what you do there will always be someone or something that is not in agreement. In Lungu term he saw that the people were indeed in trouble from a emergency so he implemented Article 31, Orban felt that his country was more than likely going into a debt crisis so, for him to help he must have acted in a way of authoritarian guidelines. Trump didn’t want to go back where minority groups were treated unequally, but for him to get his message across he had to have a large support system and when it came to Biden, he saw that Trump had separated the American people, so in his action he did what he felt was best to get them back together and that to undo everything Trump had done.  So that goes back to stating argument, “All of these have been an explicit form of democratic erosion in their own way, but it all leads back to how the leaders were or were not serving their people.”