When I woke up this morning, I was treated to two major news headlines. Fidel Castro resigned his presidency, and Pervez Musharaf’s ruling party (the PML-Q) lost the elections in Pakistan!
2008 is shaping up to be a very politically significant year. With the tantalizing hint of a black or female American President to succeed Bush, I can’t wait to see what else this year has in store for us.
Most news reports seem to proclaim Castro as the ‘longest ruling head of state in the world’ (Barring monarchs). I believe that a close second to that title is Yemen’s current President, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh became President of Yemen in July of 1978, a year before Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq and two years after Castro became ‘President of the Council of State’ of Cuba in 1976. He has remained in office ever since.
If Saleh pulls a ‘Castro’ and resigns at 81, he will have served as President for a total of 51 consecutive years, beating Castro’s record by 17 years. If the news reports are accurate about Castro being the current longest-standing head of state, then Saleh will become the new record holder in approximately 26 months from today.
Ofcourse, I may be completely off here. Do you know of any other non-monarch head of state who took office between 1976 and 1978, and remains in power up to this day?
Muhammad:
Sarfaraz:
Cheap hosting Canada:
Window Glass Replacement:
Best Man Gifts:
Jane Novak:
Paula Deschamp:
you’re forgetting al-gathafi…. He’s been in power since 69.
You could very well be right. I never had the feeling that the news reports were accurate. A quick search in wikipedia also turned out that the President of Gabon, a small African nation, is the current holder of the record.
“El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba (born Albert-Bernard Bongo on 30 December 1935) became President of Gabon in 1967. He was just 31 and the world’s youngest president at the time. After Cuban President Fidel Castro steps down in 2008, he will be the world’s longest serving ruler, excluding monarchies.” -Wikipedia
As for Ghadafi, I guess he should definitely be counted even though he apparently doesn’t hold any official public office title or role. Wikipedia lists him as the fourth longest-serving head of state.
I guess the numbers can be used to say anything though. I took 1976 as the date for Castro since that’s the official day when he actually took the public office title of ‘President’. However, many count Castro’s time as Cuba’s leader starting from 1959 following his successful Cuban Revolution, even though his official title and role after the revolution was ‘Prime Minister’.
President of the Republic of Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayyoom since 1978
Not to forget Moammar Al Gaddafi of Libya