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Back to Soviet era

In reaction to Mr Lugo's ejection, Brazil has joined with Argentina and Uruguay to bar Mr Franco from this week's meeting of the Mercosur trade block. Some talk of suspending Paraguay from the South American Union and even the Organisation of American States.

Instead of punishing Paraguay, South American governments would do better to help it get back on track by negotiating with Mr Franco to ensure that a presidential election due next April is free and fair—and held earlier. And if they want their protests to sound convincing, they need to be more consistent. Brazil called for economic sanctions over Honduras, where it had no real interest at stake, but has not done over Paraguay, where tens of thousands of Brazilians have farms and with which Brazil shares the giant Itaipu hydroelectric plant. Left-of-centre governments have been quick to condemn threats from the right against elected presidents, but not from their own side against democratic procedures. In breach of Venezuela's constitution, Hugo Chávez took partisan control of the judiciary and the armed forces. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega stole a municipal election in 2008. But both men are welcomed in the region's councils. Until South America's governments deal even-handedly with abuses of the democratic process, their pious protests will sound like hypocrisy.

Analysis: Political Winter Descends on Russia

MOSCOW — As gray winter skies descend on Moscow, Russians are adjusting to a political winter. Since taking office nearly six months ago, President Vladimir Putin has methodically reduced civic space in Russia by advocating new laws on treason, blasphemy, libel, Internet censorship and curbs on public protest.

Then on Monday, Russians saw a new twist: a well-known opposition activist, Leonid Razvozzhayev, shouting to reporters that he had been kidnapped off a sidewalk in Kyiv, Ukraine, and forcibly brought to Moscow for trial.

Oleg Kashin, a radio analyst for the Russian daily Kommersant, says get used to it. President Putin, he says, is taking Russia down the road of neighboring Belarus, a nation run for 18 years by Alexander Lukashenko, often called "the last dictator of Europe."

What may hold the Russian president back is what analysts in Russia call “handshakeability”: Putin is still welcome in Western capitals, whereas Lukashenko is not.

Back to Soviet era

With the ruling party sweeping all governors' elections two weeks ago and a new "foreign agent" law going into effect next week, Putin seems to be taking a big political step back to the Soviet Union. For now, these conservative new laws seem to be having a chilling effect.

Masha Lipman, an analyst for Carnegie Moscow, says she sees “...a desire to intimidate the tens of thousands of people who have taken part in protests and other forms of civic activism, and indeed push them back where they used to be.”

Lipman and others say the goal is to return Russia to the apolitical days during the boom years of the 2000s. During this decade, Russians largely traded their political freedoms for the freedom to travel, to buy, and to make more money.

But now the Kremlin fears that Europe’s recession and China’s slowdown will cut prices of oil, gas and other raw materials — the core of modern Russia’s economy.

If energy prices go down, the thinking goes, Putin will draw on the new repressive powers to ride out popular protests. His six-year presidential term lasts until 2018, but, as in many oil exporting nations, he is popular only as long as he can deliver the goods.