Winner of Bad Democracy Awawrd is Meles Zenawi

Febuary 2006 results

Final results

Alexander Lukashenko			2%

Hun Sen			6%

Jack Abramoff			2%

Meles Zenawi			80%

Vladimir Putin			3%

Wal-Mart			6%

1

Meles Zenawi

Though the pusillanimity of the international community must take some of the blame for the brewing tension in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia's President Meles has hardly eased tempers by rejecting out of hand a UN-brokered border settlement with Eritrea. He has deployed troops on his own streets to quell dissent stemming from vote-fiddling in May 2005; 131 face charges, including members of the opposition Coalition for United Democracy hauled up for "treason". Human Rights Watch concluded in December that Meles' administration was "violently suppressing any form of protest and punishing suspected opposition supporters". To the horror of the diaspora, Ethiopia seems to be sliding back towards the privation by which it was ravaged late last century.

2

Hun Sen

Cambodia hasn't had the best of luck with its political leaders. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, has held sway for more than twenty years. Recently, his administration has arrested or jailed, among others, the leader of an opposition party, the head of the country's independent teachers' association and two human-rights campaigners on charges of defamation. A pantomime of senate elections saw the prime minister's Cambodian People’s Party breeze home. What opponents dare to show their faces are losing hope. As one old woman put it at a recent protest: "I have lived through many wars and I only have two relatives left alive. I am old now and I want to see democracy before I die."

3

Wal-Mart

The world's biggest retailer accounts for 2.5% of the GDP of the United States and operates in 150 countries. Under the stewardship of $17.5m-a-year CEO Lee Scott, the company has come to treat wages, working conditions and prices paid to suppliers as pesky impediments to bargain-basement tinned fish. If globalisation is a race to the bottom, Wal-Mart is streets ahead. Its latest moves into China and India threaten to undercut what flimsy workplace regulation exists there. At home, it continues its ferocious campaign against unions and health insurance. Civil-rights campaigner Jesse Jackson has dubbed stores run by the corporation – which claims to be "elected" by its customers – "modern-day plantations".

4

Vladimir Putin

The Russian president, known to some as Czar Vladimir, seems bent on recreating the oligarchy that caused all that bother in 1917. The latest fuss, over a fake rock allegedly used to spy on the Kremlin, smells of the paranoia of an autocrat and a desire to squash the country's already tremulous NGOs. Putin has assumed the presidency of the G8 in muscular fashion, bullying ex-Soviet republics with a finger on the natural-gas tap. The mercilessness with which Moscow clings to Chechnya is described by one nominator as "gruesome". And, just when we thought he might head off stage right, Vlad has begun hatching plans to rewrite the constitution and ensconce himself as prime minister.

5

Alexander Lukashenko

The man known (perhaps rather complacently) as Europe's last dictator, propped up on a heap of fossil fuels and missiles funnelled by Moscow to Minsk, is so enamoured of democracy he has brought the Belarusian elections forward by six months to March. The opposition points out that it thus has no time to prepare a campaign. Lukashenko, who has ruled since turning electoral victory in 1994 into sole political hegemony, obliges by pulping the independent press. There seems little hope of a fair ballot – especially given the fiasco in 2000, since when the president has enveloped the judiciary. His mania for "order" – reputedly rooted in childhood humiliations – is believed to be behind numerous disappearances of dissidents.

6

Jack Abramoff

The arch hustler has committed the cardinal sin: jaywalking on K Street. Abramoff, flesh-presser par excellence, has pleaded guilty to fraud, tax-evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. A Washington "super-lobbyist", his web of influence-trafficking has brought down Republican majority leader of the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, and may yet ensnare higher figures among Washington's political class. Abramoff's fortune was amassed in fees from corporate clients none too keen to have legislation meddle with their profits – everyone from Indian chiefs to tobacco giants. In the end, extravagance and congressional cloaks-and-daggers got the better of him, though not before tens of millions of dollars – and heaven knows how many legislative amendments – had been squirrelled away.