Olusegun Obasanjo

Olusegun Obasanjo:

    Olusegun Obasanjo was born on March 5, 1937 in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Obasanjo served  Ruler of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1976 to 1979 and became President of  Nigeria in 1999 to May 2007.   As a military leader, politician, and diplomat, Obasanjo was the first military leader in Africa to hand over power to civilian rule. 

Throughout his teen years, he attended a Baptist High school  for boys and later worked as a teacher. Unable to afford collage, he joined the army in England where he was trained to become officer. Obasanjo ranked very high in army ranks that led him to be head of the commando division during the Biafran Conflict. Obasanjo was influenced by general Mohammed who took control of Nigerian's government and wanted to relinquish power in 1979 to civilian rule. At the following year, general Mohammed was assassinated and his leadership was passed down to Obasanjo. Three years later, Obasanjo became known as an influential statesman in where he wanted to bring back the Nigeria back to democracy. In the start of improving the country, he tried to rebuild institutions wrecked by decades of neglect, repression and mismanagement. He later created the country’s first Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which secured in excess of 275 convictions and prosecute public officials for the misuse of state funds.

In Nigeria, not only he became an influential leader but became a role model to young Africans. He established the African Leadership Forum, which is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1988 in where the primary focus of ALF is to help improve the current leadership in Africa while at the same time helping to train the next generation of leaders for Nigeria. Another organization he also founded was the Olusegun Obasanjo Foundation where charities are raised in feeding Africa, youth empowerment, education for Girls and a health initiative focused on non-communicable and water borne diseases.

As of today, Obasanjo is involved in furthering developing Africa's economic transformation in which Nigeria is among the fastest growing in the world, where it could lead a choice for international investors to join the Nigerian markets. As an experienced farmer and business man, he will try to bring in more investments into Nigeria.

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Vicente Fox

President of Mexico (PAN)  
(2000-2006)
Chief Exec. of  Coca-Cola Mex. 
(1975-1979)


Vicente Fox (Vicente Fox Quesada) was born on July 2, 1942 in Mexico City, Mexico, and was the second of nine children. He spent his early life on a family ranch in Guanajuato where he began to experience firsthand the problems of poverty in Mexico and the value of everyday people. He later moved to Mexico City to attend the Ibero-American University where he recieved his Bachelor's degree in business administration in 1964. Fox also attended Harvard Business School in 1974 where he revieced a diploma in Top Management Skills. In 1964, Fox joined Coca-Cola as a route supervisor and quickly climbed the ranks to eventually become the supervisor and head of Coca-Cola operations in all of Latin America. During his time at Coca-Cola while riding the delivery trucks, he was exposed to some of the most isolated parts of Mexico and subsequently everyday people in situations of poverty and economic troubles. This experience helped to shape his ideals and inspired him to participate in politics.

Fox began his political career during the struggling Mexican economy in 1980's when he joined the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party, or PAN), one of three main political parties in Mexico. This party's ideology rejects permanent adherence to left- or right-wing politics and instead, adapts and adheres to policies based on the problems faced by the country at any given moment. After being elected to the National Chamber of Deputies in 1988, and as Governor of Guanajuato from 1995 to 1999 Fox ran in the 2000 presidential election. He won the elections and began his term, marking the end of 71 uninterrupted years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

During his early presidency, Fox focused his efforts on improving trade relations with the United States and reducing crime, unrest, and drug trafficking in his own country, as well as introducing constitutional ammendments to grant more rights to Mexico's indigenous peoples. However, many Mexican states rejected these measures, and a number of Fox's economic policies also met tough resistence. Despite significant progress early on, the United States became skeptical of Fox's close political allignment, and although his personal popularity remained high, people became disillusioned by the slow and ineffective reform taking place and Fox left office in 2006.

محمود احمدی‌نژاد

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born 28 October 1956) was the former sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. The son of a blacksmith, Ahmadinejad was born in 1956 in Garmsar, near Tehran. He holds a PhD in traffic and transport from Tehran's University of Science and Technology, where he was a lecturer. In 2003, he was appointed mayor of Tehran. During his time as mayor, he reduced social freedoms and curtailed many of the reforms introduced by more moderate figures who ran the city before him.

For his 2005 presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad reportedly spent no money. Instead, he had the support of powerful conservatives who used their network of mosques to benefit Ahmadinejad. The campaign focused on poverty, social justice and the distribution of wealth inside Iran. Ahmadinejad also repeatedly defended his country's nuclear program, which put the US and EU in a state of worry.

He made a bold speech at the UN on the nuclear issue and refused to back down on Tehran's decision to resume uranium conversion. He continues to defend what he says is his country's right to civilian nuclear energy and its missile development programme. In June 2010 when the UN Security Council voted in favour of fresh sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, he said they should be thrown in the dustbin like a "used handkerchief". Iran blames political pressure from the US and its allies for Security Council decisions. It insists it will not break its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and will not use its technology to make a nuclear bomb.

Limited to two terms under the current Iranian constitution, Ahmadinejad supported Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei's campaign for president. On 15 June 2013, Hassan Rouhani was elected as Ahmadinejad's successor and assumed office on 3 August 2013.

Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ке́ренский (Alexander Kerensky)

May 4 1881 - June 11 1970 (89)

In Office: July 21 1917 - November 7 1917




Born to Fyodor Kerensky, a teacher and director of a local gymnasium, and Nadezhda née Adler, the daughter of a nobleman, in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), Russia, Alexander Fydoch Kerensky grew up to be a lawyer and major political leader before the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

At the age of eight, his family moved to Tashkent, where his father was newly appointed the main inspector of public schools (superintendent).  Kerensky graduated from a Tashkent secondary school with honors in 1899, and in the same year entered St. Petersburg University. There, he studied history and philology his first year. The next year he switched over to the law department and received a degree in 1904. In the same year, he got married to the daughter of a Russian general, Olga Lvovna Baranovskaya.

In 1905, Kerensky joined the Narodnik and worked as a legal counsel to victims of Revolution 1905.  By the end of the year, he was jailed for suspicion of belonging to a militant group. After the ordeal, he gained a reputation for his work as a defense lawyer in a number of political trials of revolutionaries. By 1912 he was widely known when he visited the goldfields at the Lena River and published about the Lena Minefields incident. That same year, he was elected to the Fourth Duma as a member of the Trudoviks, a non-Marxist labour party who were associated with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

When the February Revolution broke out in 1917, Kerensy was one of its most prominent leaders, being that he was a member of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and was elected vice-chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He simultaneously became the first Minister of Justice in the newly formed Provisional Government. When a resolution prohibiting leaders from joining the government was passed by the Soviet, Kerensky delivered a stirring speech at a Soviet meeting. Despite the decision never being formalized, he was granted a de facto exemption and continued acting in both capacities.

During the Kornilov Affair, Kerensky distributed arms to the Petrograd workers, and by November most of the armed workers had gone over to the Bolsheviks. On October 25-26 1917, the Bolsheviks launched the second Russian revolution of the year. Kerensky's government in Petrograd had almost no support in the city, and only one group was willing to fight; A 137 soldier strong subdivision of 2nd company of the First Petrograd Women's Battalion a.k.a The Women's Death Battalion.  This force was overwhelmed by the numerically superior pro-Bolsheviks forces and were easily defeated and captured. It took less than 20 hours for the Bolsheviks to take over the government.

Kerensky fled to France, and during the the Russian Civil War he supported neither side.  He lived in Paris until 1940, engaged in the endless splits and quarrels of the exiled Russian politicians. He married a former Australian journalist Lydia "Nell" Tritton in 1939, and they both emigrated to the US when Germany occupied France in 1940.  His wife became terminally ill in 1945, which sent them both to Australia to live with her family. After he death on April 10, 1946, Kerensky moved  back to the US, where he spent the rest of his life.  He died at his home in New York City, and because of his being largely responsible for Russia falling to the Bolsheviks, neither The local Russian Orthodox Churches in New York nor the Serbian Orthodox Church would grant him a burial. Instead, his body was flown to London where he was buried at Putney Vale's non-denominational cemetery.

Mikhail Gorbachev

     Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the head of the state of the Soviet Union, and also the Soviet Union's first and only president.

     Gorbachev was born into a peasant Russian-Ukrainian in the Soviet Union, in a town that is now part of the Causcasus region of Southern Russia. After graduating from college, Gorbachev became very active in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev rose through the part ranks, becoming one of the youngest provincial part chiefs, and later a part of the Communist Party Central Committee. On March 11, 1985, at the age of 54, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Politburo, becoming the youngest member.

     As General Secretary, Gorbachev introduced many reforms to boost the state economy, including glasnost, perestroika, and demokratizatsiya. Glasnost, meaning openness, gave Soviet citizens freedoms that had never experienced, such as freedom of speech. Also, state control of the press became far less suppressed. Demokratizatsiya, meaning democratization, was a major component of perestroika, or reconstucturing of the Soviet state.

    In March of 1990, Gorbachev was elected the first and only president of the U.S.S.R., though only served for about a year and half before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. With the union's dissoultion, Gorbachev's political career came to an end. However, Gorbachev has still remained active in Russian politics.

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown.  Born February 20th, 1951, was the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2007-2010), and leader of the Labour Party during the same time.  He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government for ten years (1997-2007). He has been a member of Parliament since 1983, previously for Dunfermline East and currently for Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath.

In 1989, Gordon Brown joined the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, and was then later promoted to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1992.  After the Labour Party's victory in 1997, Gordon was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The Labour Party contains a diversity of ideological trends from socialist to more moderately social democratic.  The party was founded in 1900, and overtook the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920's.  It was last in national government between 1997 and 2010 under Tony Blair and yes, Gordon Brown.  The party was 258 seats in the 2010 general election, and currently forms the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Gordon Brown became Prime Minister of the UK when in 2007, Tony Blair resigned and he was chosen in an uncontested election.  On May 20th, 2010, Brown announced he would step down from leader of the Labour Party, and was succeeded by Harriet Harman, and as Prime Minister by David Cameron.  Harman was later succeeded by Ed Miliband.

Porfirio Diaz

Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915)
 

Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915) Porfirio Diaz was a Liberal, Mexican general, president, politician, and dictator.  He ruled Mexico for 35 years (1877-1911).  When Mexico was in distress because of The Reform War, Spain, France, and Britain had lent a helping hand but when debts were not paid they planned to invade Veracruz.  When the alliance fell apart Spain and Britain fled leaving France troops behind to fight the battle.  Mexican forces defeated the France invasion; among the troops was young general Porfirio Diaz, who led the cavalry unit.  It made him famous and cemented his reputation. 

                When Diaz lost his first election, he rebelled and with the support of the United Sates and the Catholic Church he brought an army into Mexico City in 1876, removing President Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada and seized power in a dubious “election.”  He then appointed himself president November 28, 1876.

                In power, his first goal was to establish peace throughout Mexico. His second goal was outlined in his motto – "little of politics and plenty of administration."  He created an economic boom allowing foreign investment to develop Mexico’s cast resources.  Money flowed in from the United States and Europe, and soon mines, plantations and factories were built and humming with production.

                Diaz had suppressed the media and controlled the court system. He managed to dissolve all local authorities and all aspects of federalism that once existed. Not long after he became president, the leaders of Mexico were answering directly to him.  To secure power, he engaged in various forms of co-optation and coercion.  Although, cracks began appearing and the economy went into a recession and when people began speaking out it was not tolerated.

                In 1910, Diaz stated that Mexico was ready for democracy and elections and that he would retire and allow other candidates to compete for the presidency. Although when he didn’t want to lose to Francisco Madero, who wanted to run because he felt that the time for Diaz to step aside came, he re-elected himself.  In the end a revolution broke out when Madero would not let him gain power again and overruled him.  When he had been defeated, he was allowed to go into exile and died in Paris on July 2, 1915.