Whether prosecutions of ex-presidents are a threat to or a guard for democracy depends on the maturity of a country, say these political science experts.
Jury members listen to readback of testimony as former US president Donald Trump attends his criminal trial in New York on May 30, 2024, in this courtroom sketch.
Did these prosecutions deter future leaders from wrongdoing? For what it’s worth, Korea’s two most recent presidents have so far kept out of legal trouble.Even in mature democracies, prosecutors or judges can abuse prosecutions. But overzealous political prosecution is more likely, and potentially more damaging, in emerging democracies where courts and other public institutions may be.
A woman holds a sign depicting Mexican former president Enrique Pena Nieto behind bars during a protest in Mexico City on Sep 26, 2021, to mark seven years of the disappearance of 43 students of a teaching training school in Ayotzinapa. That’s the bargain South Africa struck as apartheid’s decades of segregation and human rights abuses ended in the early 1990s. South Africa’s white-dominated governmentThis strategy helped the countrya civil war. But it hurt efforts to create a more equal South Africa. As a result, the country has retained one of the, too, as former president Zuma’s prosecution for lavish personal use of public funds shows. But South Africa has a famously independent judiciary.
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