Foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world
Is impeachment fever reaching a new level? First South Korea, now the Philippines; is Romania next?
Impeachment is not a new tool for removing presidents, to be sure, but its use—or sometimes, just the threat of it—seems to be catching on in more and more democracies around the world, when an unpopular leader runs afoul of the law or the opposition party—or both. Just ask Brazil, where Dina Rousseff easily won a second term as president in 2014 but could not make it to the finish line, before she was impeached and removed from office midway in 2016.
But nowhere does impeachment seem to have become more commonplace than over the past two decades in South Korea, where embattled conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is being tried this week in Seoul by the Constitutional Court for his illegal attempt to impose martial law in December, one he later retracted. He was still impeached days later by the opposition-controlled parliament, eventually arrested, and taken into custody. He refuses to cooperate.
On February 6, the commander of a crack South Korean special forces unit testified he had been asked by a superior officer “how to cut electricity to parliament” to prevent that body from rejecting Yoon’s order, which was later retracted. Others testified they were told to drag opposition lawmakers out of parliament for protesting.
South Korean President Yoon (left) listens to testimony at his impeachment trial. Courtesy Reuters/CNA
Yoon has been suspended since mid-December from duty as president until the eight-member court reaches its verdict; he has so far stubbornly refused calls to resign. If found guilty, he will be removed from office, followed by a new presidential election within 60 days. If acquitted, he may resume his duties. In either case, he still faces a separate trial for charges of insurrection—which carries a heavy penalty: either life imprisonment or death.
Yoon is the third South Korean president to be impeached in the past two decades. Roh Moo-Hyun, who served from 2003 to 2008, was impeached in 2004 but acquitted, and was returned to office to complete his term. Park Geun-hye, daughter of former president Park Chung-Hee, was inaugurated in 2013, then removed from office in 2017; she was later convicted on separate charges of corruption and abuse of power. The first former president to enter prison, she was jailed until her compassionate pardon in 2021 by her successor, Moon Jae-In.
Former President Roh, depicted at his funeral in 2009. Courtesy New York Times
Former President Park of South Korea, ca. 2013. Public domain photo
Yoon’s first acting successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo, was also impeached in December for defying Parliament by refusing to appoint new members of the constitutional court itself; his trial will presumably be held after Yoon’s trial is completed.
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In South Korea’s near-neighbor, the Philippines, impeachment efforts have been launched by that country’s parliament against the country’s vice president, Sara Duterte, who was charged with complaints of “alleged misuse of millions in public funds” and her alleged “plans to assassinate President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., his wife, and the speaker of the House of Representatives, who is Mr. Marcos’s cousin,” according to the New York Times.
Philippines Vice President Sara Duterte, impeached this week. Courtesy New York Times
Duterte, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, is already a controversial figure in Filipino politics. A member of an opposing party, she joined forces with Marcos in 2022, helping him win a landslide victory, but their alliance soon collapsed and the two parted ways politically.
Marcos, widely known as “Bong-Bong,” is the only son of longtime dictator-president Ferdinand Marcos, who was overthrown in 1986, and his extravagant wife Imelda, who left behind thousands of shoes when they fled. She later returned as his grieving widow, elected to serve in the Filipino House in her 80s in 2010. [See “Philippines’ Vice President Is Impeached, Deepening Political Turmoil,” February 5, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/world/asia/duterte-marcos-philippines-feud.html .]
Duterte’s impeachment trial will be held in the 24-member Filipino Senate, where her party holds a much stronger position than in the lower House, which voted 215 to 91 to impeach her. That trial will almost certainly not take place until after mid-term congressional elections in late spring, and few expect the Senate to remove her from office by the required two-thirds majority.
Duterte’s vice presidential position holds very little independent power, but she has already expressed a strong desire to use it as a steppingstone to run against Marcos for president in 2028. She has so far refused to resign. The impeachment effort is seen by observers as mainly intended to weaken her political standing, even if she is not convicted.
She becomes the second-highest elected official ever impeached in the Philippines. Former President Joseph Estrada was impeached for corruption in 2000, but his Senate trial did not proceed to a conclusion. The presidency was instead declared “vacant”—after he “resigned”—by the country’s Supreme Court in early 2001, and his vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was sworn in to complete his term.
Former Philippines president Joseph Estrada. Public domain photo
Professor Arroyo, after being reelected as president in 2004, survived two unsuccessful attempts to impeach her, and later entered the House of Representatives after completing her second term in 2010. She eventually served as House Speaker. And at 77, she is still going strong …
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Half a world away, in the clownlike atmosphere of Balkan politics, soon-to-be-outgoing President Klaus Iohannis’s term is technically over (it ended in December)— and according to opposition parties in the lower house of the Romanian parliament, since he will not resign, he has been threatened with impeachment, much like Donald Trump (after leaving office) in 2021. But like that of his equally-reviled predecessor Traian Basescu more than a decade ago, Iohannis’s impeachment is probably going nowhere …
Gotcha! Not going anywhere, says Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. Courtesy Reuters
The results of the first round of the November presidential election, which was on the verge of a second-round runoff between the two highest vote-getters, were first validated, then suddenly set aside by that country’s Constitutional Court in early December. Apparently, no one on the court—or in Iohannis’s government—liked the fact that no candidate from the distrusted Social Democratic-Liberal coalition made it into the runoff.
The first-round leader, a curmudgeonly professor without a party, was inscrutable independent Calin Georgescu, whose preference for Russian president Vladimir Putin terrified almost everyone except the 23 percent of Romanian voters who agreed with him. The runner-up, a small-city mayor from a reformist opposition party, was Elena Lasconi, preferred by just over 19 percent. She claimed she would have won the runoff, and like Georgescu, strongly opposed the court order setting aside the first election.
Georgescu, the once-and-future frontrunner in Romania’s presidential sweepstakes? Public domain
Elena Lasconi’s radiant smile earned her an unexpected second place in Romania in November. Public domain
Left out completely were Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, a Social Democrat who was barely edged out by Lasconi, and right-wing nutcase George Simion, an outspoken NATO-skeptic nationalist who wants back territory lost in World War II. (Here’s a clue—the war is over, George.) Simion also opposes gay marriage, Holocaust education, and further aid to Ukraine, and in Parliament, channels Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, his authoritarian role model.
Simion began his meteoric career by opposing the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020—a popular position in superstitious, conspiracy-theory-plagued Romania. He drew about 14 percent as the head of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, now shockingly the second largest party in Romania’s parliament after the recent Parliamentary elections.
George Simion, whose party now threatens Romania’s sanity in its Parliament. Public domain photo
The constitutional court first accepted the results, then turned around swiftly—almost precipitously—when secret information was released about (alleged) Russian involvement in the TikTok-heavy campaign that propelled a nearly-unknown Georgescu to the front of the line. And guess who declassified all those secret documents at the very last minute. Home boy Iohannis, who knows a really good thing when he’s got it …
The re-run of November’s election will now be held on May 4, and a runoff on May 18, if needed, but the voters may not change their minds very much. Many observers expect the outcome to be almost identical to the rejected results—with Georgescu perhaps increasing his lead due to all the free publicity. [See “Romanian sets new election date,” https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-election-2025-hungary-national-liberals-social-democrats-law-court/ .]
Meanwhile, Klaus Iohannis has refused to consider stepping down after 10 years as president, claiming the country needs him more than ever—even though more than 83 percent of the country thoroughly disapproves of him, according to the latest polls. And the so-called Constitutional Court—or the Constipated Court, as some now call it—recently strained its bowels mightily to find a legal technicality allowing him to stay on for another six months, thereby surrendering any final pretense of impartiality.
The lower house of the Parliament, fed up with the situation, has voted to propose impeaching him—a third of House deputies so far seem to favor that, including Simion’s party and two other smaller rightwing parties, and Lasconi’s party may yet join them. But because 50 percent plus one is needed, approval is currently not likely due to the slim majority held by the reconstructed grand coalition, led once again by old warhorse Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu—who is still itching to become president. And it would still have to go to a nationwide referendum, as in 2012.
The coalition seems to be united, more or less, behind the rather odd next-up choice of Crin Antonescu—a former Liberal who has not held office for a decade, who was Senate president and briefly, acting president when former president Basescu, in his second unpopular term, was impeached in 2012. A whopping 87 percent of Romanians voting in a special referendum gave Basescu the big Carpathian boot that year—but Romania’s constitutional court—the same body now busy sucking up to yet another unpopular president—said not so fast, guys.
Because fewer than 50 percent of the voting base jad bothered to turn out, the court ruled it was all for naught. So Basescu was hastily reinstated, and Antonescu threw up his hands and got out of politics.
No one knows for sure who will run—stranger things have happened, and candidates are routinely disqualified—or of course, who will win. No one knows if all-but-certain front-runner Georgescu will even be allowed to run in the May 4 election in the topsy-turvy, TikTok, knife-in-your-back underworld of Bucharest politics.
All that is certain is that no one wants Klaus Iohannis in office another day. And yet, here he is, still grinning…
Next time: More foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world