President Donald Trump thinks he’s suffered more injustice than the alleged witches of Salem, but it could be worse.
Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, faced possible impeachment in 2008, leading to his resignation. In the end — earlier this week — Musharraf was sentenced to death for treason.
At the other end of the spectrum, Trump isn’t even the first leader to face impeachment this month. That (dis)honor belongs to Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong.
Lam survived a Dec. 5 impeachment vote by a margin of 36 to 26, but need not have worried too much. The vote was an intermediate step and the Communist Party hierarchy in Beijing would likely have stepped in to end the process if she had lost. That’s a luxury Trump won’t have if his impending Senate trial goes unexpectedly awry.
Exclusive: Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show
The travails of Trump, Musharraf and Lam raise the question of how countries around the world offer lawmakers and citizens the chance to remove high-office holders from their positions.
In parliamentary systems, a national government leader can typically be replaced for any reason if they have lost the confidence of a majority of members of the lower house of parliament (the equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives).
American-style presidential impeachment exists in countries including India, Brazil, Russia, France, Germany, South Korea, Philippines, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ireland.
While American lawmakers now have impeached a president three times, the world leader in impeachment is Norway, which modeled its system after the United States’ and had invoked impeachment eight times before 1927, until the constitutional mechanism fell into disuse following a failed attempt to impeach the prime minister and six members of his Cabinet.
Source: From impeachment to death sentences: How other countries punish wayward leaders
Recent Comments