Favorite Third World dictators

The more benign, the better IMHO. For me, it's Lee Kuan Yew and Ferdinand Marcos. Both relatively benign and extremely competent. Except for Imelda using the treasury as her personal chequing account, Marcos wasn't too bad. IMO better than all Republic Presidents except Magsaysay, Aquino (for democracy, not policies) and GMA.
 
Well i dono if Spain could count as a third world country......

.... i have always had sort of a soft spot for Francisco Franco, yeah he was a fascist, but unlike mussolini, could stand up to Hitler.
 
yes i would argue that Marcos was one of our best presidents (in terms of reforms, contributions, and intellect), but he is not remembered as such in our annals of history.

After his reelection, things took a downhill turn. Imposed martial law and all. And boy, the amount of money his cronies and his family got through corruption. heck, even now her infinite collection of shoes is a testament to that.

and im sorry but you must be joking when you say he is one of our best presidents in terms of democracy. heck, he stayed in office for what, 20 years. and that snap election in the '80's, can't really be considered anything other than fraudulent.

Also, don't agree with the implicit count of cory aquino being better in policies. personally, and what a lot of my countrymen feel, she really didn't have any strong policies, she was just swept into power because of sympathy (and an apparent "successor) for her husband, who was supposed to be president if he had survived the assassination attempt.
 
I meant how Aquino restored democracy. Marcos' margin of 1.6 million was almost the same as GMA's 2004 one of 1.2 million, and GMA's re-election was relatively clean. Unlike Ahmadinejad, he knew how to rig. Cory Aquino was quite weak, but she was a beloved, transitional figure. Her husband had been suckered into endorsing Martial Law and the New Society and Marcos played with him as his successor. If Marcos mentioned that on the '86 hustings Ninoy Aquino's credibility would be vaporized.
 

Onyx

Banned
Salazar, if he counts, sad though I can't visit to many of the Former Portuguese Colonies in which a ton of them have Colonial Relics, because of the Civil Wars in the past.
 
Qaddafi.

He is the playboy dictator of the 3rd world, I mean an army of virgin female bodyguards? What a role-model for all third world dictators. If you have to be a corrupt ass why hide it?

gaddafi.jpg


qaddafis-bodyguards.jpg
 

Onyx

Banned
Yeah but there is a Special Women's Division in the ROKA Spec Ops....
And from what I've heard, they can pwn a ton of North Koreans.....
 

Neroon

Banned
Park Chung Hee for the Capitalists.
Iosef Tito for the Communists.

Both count as "best of all realistic options" IMO.
 
hmmm, how bout Ahmed Tejjan Kabbah in Sierra Leone, Daniel Arap Moi in Kenya, or Eric Gairy of Grenada (the 3rd-listed purely for eccentricity's sakes) ?
 
The more benign, the better IMHO. For me, it's Lee Kuan Yew and Ferdinand Marcos. Both relatively benign and extremely competent.

Really? One of those gents was into killing people with his secret police apparatus, while the other was a fairly illiberal-but-non-murderous PM of Singapore.

I have some time for Harry Lee, in the same way I have time for all Indian PMs or the current presidents of Indonesia and South Africa. Marcos, AFAIC, must go into the 'degenerate tyrant' column.
 
The more benign, the better IMHO. For me, it's Lee Kuan Yew and Ferdinand Marcos. Both relatively benign and extremely competent. Except for Imelda using the treasury as her personal chequing account, Marcos wasn't too bad. IMO better than all Republic Presidents except Magsaysay, Aquino (for democracy, not policies) and GMA.

Lee Kuan Yew isn't and wasn't precisely a dictator. Like Singapore's system of government he falls into a sort of gray area. Also Singapore isn't Third World any more and hasn't been for about twenty years.

And Marcos was horribly corrupt.
 
well pinochet.

for all the nay-sayers allende only won a plurality in the elections, and the chilean legislature declared a motion of no confidence.

as well as that, allende was a kgb asset (mitrokhin archive).

Pinochet saw the writing on the wall and mounted a coup. Allende committed suicide, thouhg it's still debated.

After 16 years, pinochet PEACEFULLY stepped down after a referendum.

How many did pinochet kill? ~3000, mainly in his coup. Horrible, but nothing compared to Mao Tse Tung (who may acount as a third world dictator).

As well as that, he left a reasonably good economy in chile.
 
I'm gonna agree with Axeman and Say Gaddafi, I mean apart form the craziness, and good fashion sense, he's pragmatic and, the system he intended to create is a good one, but like most revolutionaries, for various reasons it was never fully established.

Oh, and he basically said (he never said this or anything like it, I'm meaning figuratively);
'Yeah, we were researching making nukes, but we got bored with that, especially when the West started complaining more than usual.'
 
.... i have always had sort of a soft spot for Francisco Franco, yeah he was a fascist, but unlike mussolini, could stand up to Hitler.

Salazar, if he counts, sad though I can't visit to many of the Former Portuguese Colonies in which a ton of them have Colonial Relics, because of the Civil Wars in the past.

well pinochet.

for all the nay-sayers allende only won a plurality in the elections, and the chilean legislature declared a motion of no confidence.

as well as that, allende was a kgb asset (mitrokhin archive).

Pinochet saw the writing on the wall and mounted a coup. Allende committed suicide, thouhg it's still debated.

After 16 years, pinochet PEACEFULLY stepped down after a referendum.

How many did pinochet kill? ~3000, mainly in his coup. Horrible, but nothing compared to Mao Tse Tung (who may acount as a third world dictator).

As well as that, he left a reasonably good economy in chile.


GAH!!!


Thanks for these fascinating insights into your prejudices.
 
Top