Letter from the Editors

Welcome to the April 2022 issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February caught most of the world by surprise, despite weeks of increasingly urgent warnings from U.S. officials that military action was imminent. In this issue, we take a closer look at events and trends that might seem surprising to some observers, but are in fact deeply embedded in historical and social trends – and thus predictable. From the political resurrection of the ousted Marcos clan in the Philippines to Nicaragua’s sudden severing of Taiwan ties, from Bhutan’s COVID-19 successes to the gains of the transgender community in deeply conservative Pakistan, some surprises are not all that surprising upon deeper examination.

In our cover story, Anthony Esguerra, a multimedia journalist covering the Philippines and Southeast Asia, lays out what is at stake in the Philippines’ presidential election, set for May 9. The next president will have to tackle perennial issues (the South China Sea disputes, for example) along with the acute economic and social crises brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. But this year’s election has added weight: With the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos as the current front-runner, many believe the Philippines’ democracy itself is at stake. “We say ‘we get the government we deserve.’ If we did not learn from our mistakes before, then perhaps we have to be reminded of our wrong ways by experiencing it again,” one analyst tells Esguerra, referring to the period of martial law under Marcos.

When Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007, he at first maintained the country’s ties to Taiwan. Although he’d dropped Taipei in 1985 in favor of Beijing, his successor resumed relations in 1990 and it was only in December 2021 that Managua once again cut ties with Taipei. Woven through this saga, Taipei-based writer James Baron says, are the legacies of the Cold War, the heady days of Taipei’s anti-communist obsession, and the fervor (and paranoia) of the Sandinistas.

With the COVID-19 pandemic rolling into its third year, few countries can boast of a vaccination rate north of 90 percent. Bhutan, a small, landlocked Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, is one such nation. As Namgay Zam explains, informed and compassionate leadership is what sets the country’s pandemic response apart. Zam, an independent journalist and the executive director of the Journalists’ Association of Bhutan, highlights the government’s efforts – from relief funds to volunteer organizing – and those of the country’s king, as critical to handling the pandemic the Bhutanese way.

Finally, we turn our attention to one of the world’s most marginalized groups: the transgender community. In recent years, Pakistan’s transgender community, also known as the Khwaja Sira, has notched several historic successes, writes Somaiyah Hafeez, a feature story writer. These include the first transgender doctor and lawyer, and the right to identify as a “third gender” on national identity cards. But discrimination still runs rampant, with enforcement of existing laws lagging behind the progress made on paper and the ambitions of Pakistan’s Khwaja Sira.

We hope you enjoy these stories and the many more in the following pages.